


Unknown Variables

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Beautiful Mind - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, M/M, Mental Illness, Sherlock/A Beautiful Mind - Fusion, spoilers for the film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I'm only alive because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unknown Variables

**Author's Note:**

> For [my wife](http://reichebach.tumblr.com), who loves me and my writing, and who I love and try to write something good for every time she feels awful about the world that is cruel and a son of a bitch.

**1993**

La Traviata blaring from the stereos, Sherlock assumes his thinking pose. Hands under his chin, tips of his fingers just touching his jawbone, he is already at the gates of his mind palace, when the door bursts open.

“Hello, darling! Daddy’s home!”

Sherlock jumps up. In the doorway stands a man, a boy more like, swaying slightly, big grin on his face, clothes in a horrible disarray and his tie tossed over his shoulder.

“What the ---“

“Excellent place this. Lots of alcohol the moment you come in, every floor buzzing with pretty mollies still so innocent and sweet in their fantasy that the big boys came here to study.”

He bangs his suitcase on the sofa and turns around with a sort of pirouette to stare at Sherlock lying on his bed.

“Sherlock Holmes?”

He offers his hand, but when Sherlock keeps on looking at him with distaste and in disbelief, he raises both his hands in mock surrender, wiggles his fingers and says,

“Jim Moriarty. Hi.”

His eyes are like melted chocolate, dark and inviting. He winks and is gone.

 

 

“I arrived last night,” Jim announces when he returns with a towel round his shoulders, bathrobe open. He walks to his suitcase and rummages around.

Sherlock hasn’t been able to concentrate after Jim has barged into the room. He has spent some time deducing the man from what he could see from his suitcase and appearance, gotten frustrated on the prospect of having to tolerate another human being in his living space on a day-to-day basis and finally sat down at his desk in front of the window.

“Just in time for the English Department cocktails. The cock was mine, the tail belonged to a lovely young thing with a passion for Eliot.”

Jim stops to think, biting his lip, eyes pondering.

“Or maybe that was his name, I’m not quite sure.”

Sherlock is not looking, but from the silence and shuffling of clothes he knows that Jim has pulled on a shirt and turned to look at him. He hears him toss the towel over his head and rub his hair.

“I wonder if I could find someone with a passion for Wilde from the Introduction to Victorian Literature tomorrow. A first-year, still unfamiliar with everything important but oddly distracted by the character descriptions of Lord Henry Wotton. You’re not easily distracted, are you?”

He has made his way quietly to the desk and is now peering over Sherlock’s shoulder at the vials and notes scattered across the desk.

“You do know the term ‘molly’ is basically dead,” Sherlock says and opens another notebook.

“Ah, don’t think I’m not familiar with your fancy with big words. I heard you on the courtyard yesterday. Gave our dorm supervisor hell of a time outing him with his drinking habits.”

He jumps on the desk and crouches so that he is staring into Sherlock’s face.

“Fantastic job by the way.”

The smirk and the praise together force a small smile out of Sherlock as well.

Jim takes a plastic bag full of tiny pills from his pocket, takes a few and throws them down his throat, sighing happily.

“If we can’t break the ice, we might as well dance on it,” he rattles the bag invitingly in front of Sherlock’s face.

 

 

At dawn, they lie on Sherlock’s bed, limbs hanging over the sides, ear to ear, staring at the ceiling.

“So what’s your story?” Jim turns his head and nuzzles Sherlock’s temple. “Poor circumstances, never had the chance to go to a real university?”

“I am very normal,” Sherlock answers.

After a moment of silence, Jim stops his snuffling and moves up to balance on his elbow to give Sherlock space.

“Loving parents, annoying older brother, went to all the right schools, never missed a meal at home. I’m as regular as they come.”

“Maybe you’re just better with chemicals than people,” Jim smiles down at him.

“Better with dead people than the living,” Sherlock corrects. “I like to open up cadavers and mix cocktails that can make them blow up. My brother always tells me I have double the brain and half the heart.”

“Wow. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Sherlock chuckles.

“But then again, he’s the one with three times the brain and even less of a heart than I do.”

Jim turns his head a little to inspect the curls behind Sherlock’s ear. Fingering the hair he says,

“You weren’t at the Chemistry department enrolment party though.”

“Can’t stand social niceties. Especially when they are not very nice.”

Jim chuckles and pulls at the hair, puts it in his mouth and suckles.

“Well, you’re just as popular as your shampoo. I wouldn’t think anyone would like to wash their hair with that muck.”

He drops the hair with a slight puff.

“Unless they’re trying to drive people away. Anyone specific in mind?”

Sherlock turns his back to him and tries to sit up straight. He falls over the bed and into Jim’s open suitcase.

“Victor Trevor,” he giggles.

Jim tries to give him a hand but is laughing so hard he flops down on Sherlock himself.

“He smells of almonds. It’s his hand cream,” Sherlock continues.

Jim howls with laughter.

 

 

\\\

“Hey, Holmes!” Victor yells from the door while tugging off his coat. “Who’s winning - you or you?”

Sherlock nods his pawn towards Jim but he has just disappeared through the doors to the loo.

The pub is full of smoke and glasses clinking against table tops. There is already a crowd, even though it’s still early evening. Jim has lured him into playing a game of chess on the pretence that besides beer, no one would be there.

 _Everyone_ is there. Some sort of social gathering arranged by Victor Trevor, one where he doesn’t have to buy a single drink for himself or the girls he tries to get into his bed by offering to buy them a drink.

His usual group of admirers is surrounding him, Wilkes from Economics, Anderson from Chemistry and several others who Sherlock hasn’t bothered to memorise. They are eyeing a group of girls standing at the bar, though Anderson’s eyes wander off to the opposite corner where a curly-haired woman in a tight mini skirt is talking to another one in an even tighter skirt, both holding a pint.

Victor with his cronies make their way to where Sherlock is sitting, old torn photos and pieces of papers scattered in front of him, on top of which the chess board is standing from when Jim had slammed it down and moved his pawn. Victor sits down on Jim’s chair across Sherlock and takes one of the pictures in his hand.

“So this is your Jack the Ripper?” he inspects the grimy crime scene photo. “Why do you work yourself to death over something they’ve tried to solve for years? Your brother forcing you?”

“It’s a cold case, give it up already!” Anderson groans as he pulls a chair over to sit next to Victor.

“Just because you’d give up on a hundred piece jigsaw puzzle doesn’t mean we all have as limited attention span as you do, Anderson,” Sherlock takes the photo back from Victors poised fingers.

The group laughs and Anderson glares at Sherlock murderously, taking a swig from his beer.

Sherlock turns to look towards the loo, hoping to see Jim come out, and so he misses the group of women that walk in. He only looks towards the bar when the boys around him start to moan and make silent cat-calls.

A blonde, a brunette and a redhead. It’s like the beginning of a bad joke.

Of course all eyes are on the blonde.

“Look at that rack!” Anderson pants.

“Roll up your tongue, Anderson, you’re dripping over my evidence,” Sherlock says and moves his papers away from Anderson’s loosening grip around his bottle.

“Just because you have the sex drive of a rock,” Anderson sneers, looking around, expecting a round of applause for his gibe. No one is looking at him, even the girl hanging by Wilkes’ shoulder has her eyes on the blonde, who is --

“Oh, God, she’s looking at Holmes!” Wilkes whines.

Sherlock, startled by the sound of his name, looks up and directly at the bar where the big-breasted woman is listening to her friends chatter but clearly her concentration is directed towards their table. There’s no question that her eyes are directed at him.

Anderson looks incredulous as the woman accepts her drink from the bartender, only to resume her coy glances. He scoffs, swigs down his beer and makes his way towards the loo.

“Anderson is still pissed at you. Poor sod’s been grovelling at Sally’s feet since you gave him a helping hand with his wooing yesterday,” Wilkes says.

“Especially when you said that thing about exchange of fluids,” Victor giggles into his glass. “That really got him going.”

Sherlock follows Anderson’s brisk trot towards the men’s, hoping again to see Jim emerge. But no one exists when Anderson bangs the door against the wall.

Suddenly the woman is at his elbow, grinning from ear to ear in a way she must think is seducing. She opens her mouth but before she can get a word out, Sherlock opens his.

“You are wearing the same underwear third day in a row, your hair barely covers the hickey another man has sucked on your neck and your pubic hair stinks of the perfume you squirted there before you went out. Why _exactly_ would I want to stick my dick in Chanel no. 5 and probably get yeast infection on the go?”

In the dead silence that follows, Sherlock studies, suddenly intrigued, how the woman’s eyes get so large they look like they will pop right out, then darken into almost black and reduce to slits. She raises her hand and gives him a slap across the face so hard his ears ring.

The boys clap and cheer after her as she makes her way to the bar, grabs her coat and is out of the door.

Shaking his head, Sherlock begins to collect his papers. Jim be damned, he can find his own way back to the dorm.

At the other end of the table, Victor chuckles and lights a cigarette.

“Another great evening for Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock snaps his head up, ready to retort something clever, decides against it and tries to get up to go. Victor’s finger on the pawn Sherlock last used to eat one of Jim’s rooks stops him.

“Can’t get any worse, can it?” Victor muses.

He glances at Sherlock, mouth spreading into a smile around the cigarette dangling from his teeth.

“You scared?” he asks, picking up the pawn and wiggling it at Sherlock.

Silence falls over the table again, but now Sherlock does not hear it. He stares at the white piece of wood dangling in front of him, slams his notes back on the table and sits down.

“Terrified,” he draws his chair back, “mortified”, he sits down and takes the pawn from Victor, “petrified,” he places it back where it was, his finger pressing the piece to the board like he is trying to glue them together, “stupefied by you.”

He gestures at the board. The silence around them persists. Wilkes’ cigarette has burnt out but he hasn’t noticed it. The girl by his elbow sips her drink, eyes moving rapidly between Sherlock and Victor who moves his knight, taking Sherlock’s pawn.

“Let me ask you something, Sherlock,” Victor says after a moment.

Sherlock makes a noncommittal sound, not taking his eyes off the board.

“Bastian has already published _two_ papers before even beginning his thesis. He has an interview with Shad Sanderson next week.”

“Humdrum desk job for a mundane personality.”

Wilkes nods and smiles as if he’s flattered.

“Peter here,” Victor points towards a small, mouse-teethed man, who grins at the chance of being noticed, “is being considered for a 10,000 pound grant for his accomplishments in stem-cell research.”

“I read his paper too,” Sherlock pushes another piece across the board, eating Victor’s bishop on the way. “Derivative drivel.”

The mouseman’s face falls.

“And _I_ ,” Victor steals Sherlock’s last pawn from his fingers, “am going to meet up with the head of the department tomorrow morning to get congratulated on my services to the university and told that I have a bright future as the head in front of me. But your accomplishments? Zero.”

Sherlock snatches another of his pieces fast, wanting to have the game over and done with.

“Nil,” Victor emphasises with a stomp of his king against the board. ”You just sit in your dark room, fiddling round with papers older than your grandmother, trying to solve a case minds much brighter and more experienced than yours haven’t been able to solve, dreaming that your failure to perform here will be forgiven if you find someone whose victims are already rotten in the ground. My question is, Sherlock, what if you were not meant to play this game?”

He moves his queen slowly towards Sherlock’s king.

“What if you lose?”

With a flick of his wrist, he checkmates the king and stumps his cigarette into the ashtray.

Wilkes’ girl whistles, Wilkes himself chuckling slowly and turning round to collect fivers from the crowd having stopped to view the game. In the middle of the grumbling and victorious snickering, Sherlock suddenly jumps up, tipping the chess board over the table and scrambles to the exit with his papers clutched against his chest. Behind him, Victor, waving a bundle of money he has won from the viewers calls after him:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the great Sherlock Holmes!”

 

 

\\\

Jim finds him from the library three days later, sitting on a window sill with the panes scribbled full of his spidery handwriting.

“Did you run out of notebooks?” Jim asks him quietly.

It is silent and dark in the library, close to closing time and only a few students still linger between the shelves leafing books by the tables.

Sherlock avoids Jim’s gaze and writes down another long note on a pane already so full he has to continue over another scribble apparently less important.

“Why are you here, Sherlock?”

Sherlock leans against the glass and crosses his arms over his chest, curls up into a ball like an insecure child.

“Because I have no place else to go.”

Jim stays silent. Sherlock stares out of the window at the boys playing football on the quadrangle, the principal walking briskly towards them to tell them off.

“My mother died last spring,” Sherlock continues. “My brother is the only family I have left, and I can’t stay with him. I refused any money he wanted to offer me, got a scholarship and came here. Oxford was terrible, too far away from everything, and I thought that in London I could feel part of something again. But sometimes I just _hate_ it here. I am not qualified for anything. I know everything there is to know about chemistry and physics and criminology but without a degree I am nothing. So I’m stuck. I have to go through meaningless lectures and get credits for years before I can graduate. Because I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Yes you do.”

“Well, yes I do. But I don’t know how to do it. They will not take me to the police force and I will not go through years of training in order to get stuck in another vicious wheel of hierarchy where I can’t actually do anything before I’m a sergeant or something.”

Jim still doesn’t say a word. Sherlock presses his forehead harder against the pane. Finally he glances up to see Jim’s dark eyes looking at him with so much comfort and understanding it makes shivers run down his spine.

“When was the last time you ate?” Jim asks.

“What?” Sherlock blinks.

Jim sits down next to him.

“You know, _food_. When was the last time you had some?”

Sherlock mumbles something, pointing at a lunchbox with a half-eaten smelly sandwich he has taken a bite from days earlier.

“Pizza. That’s what you need right now. Up you get,” Jim decides.

He jumps up and pulls at his arm until Sherlock relents and stands up as well. Jim takes his shoes from the ground and presses them in his hands, waits for him to push them to his feet then claps his arm around his neck and leads him out.

 

 

 

**2002**

The woman is standing under the dim streetlight, dangling an unlit cigarette in her fingers, tapping it against her thumb in time with some tune playing inside her head. She is dressed for the cold weather, but elegantly, her body hidden under a black fur that covers even her luscious brown hair. Sherlock can see that under all the layers she is hiding an ever more luscious body, visible only to those who are able to see her for what she is and have a need for what she can offer.

It’s in the click of her shoes, the tap of her foot, the sway of her hips, the wave of her hand as she beckons Sherlock closer.

“Do you have a light?”

Sherlock dives in to his pocket and pulls out his lighter along with a cigarette, lights it and allows the woman to light hers from the hot end.

It’s more intimate this way.

“How much?” he asks, teeth biting into the cigarette so that he almost cuts it in two.

The woman inspects him through a cloud of smoke.

“You looking for a good time?” she replies.

The line is not something he would have expected. The cheesiness of it, it’s such a cliché. Next she’ll probably ask if he’s been a bad boy.

“Have you been naughty or nice?”

His back bristles.

“Just give me a price.”

The woman stubs her half-smoked cigarette with her high heeled shoe.

“Five hundred. An hour. Cash.”

Sherlock allows himself to be lead away into the darkness of the street.

 

 

\\\

She takes him into the rich Belgravia, to a white house with marble columns by the front doors. He wonders if her pimp keeps a decent house or whether it’s just a show for the outsiders.

But the inside of the house is spotless. She takes off her fur coat, revealing a skin-tight black satin dress with gold lamé sewn into it, then offers to take his but he refuses to be undressed. So she leads him upstairs with his coat still on, through a door to a vast bedroom with a four-poster bed and vanishes behind a screen to change into “something more comfortable”. He sits on the edge of the bed, inspecting her movements from behind the screen, her hair coming loose and she appears again dressed in a dragon green dressing gown, hair free, garters and knee-high socks visible through the fabric, no bra.

Sherlock swallows, and she sees it, looks at his Adam’s apple pop. She steps lightly to the bed, stops between Sherlock’s legs and pushes her hands against the fabric still covering his shoulders.

“You know, we really have to get rid of this if we want to get anywhere tonight.”

Sherlock shakes his head frantically.

“No, we don’t.”

She doesn’t look irritated or disappointed, only neutral and calm as she pushes him against the bed, his legs dangling over the edge, and climbs to sit astride over his hips. Her hand goes to the pocket of her dressing gown and draws out a square tin wrap.

“Tit for tat,” she says and shakes the item in front of his eyes.

Sherlock pulls out a bundle of cash from his coat pocket, his last drug money. He’ll have to come up with a way to get more for tomorrow or he’ll crash. This is not wise. He shouldn’t be here with this woman, spending money on things he knows will only make him feel worse, not numb his senses like the sweet flow of cocaine can.

He doesn’t remember why he has come here anymore.

A wail of crying rises at the other end of the hall.

“You have a child?” he asks horrified.

She goes to the door, _click-clack_ , out to the hall and across the landing. He can hear her shushing and cooing and generally the crying stops. A door closes quietly and she returns, _click-clack_ , back to the bedroom and closes the door behind her. For a moment, she stays there, leaning against the door, staring ponderingly at her naked toes.

Sherlock balances on his elbows and looks at her silently.

Then she shakes herself as if to rid herself from a feeling that has followed her from the other room, is suddenly back at the bed and climbing on it to lean over Sherlock.

She smells strongly of child’s hair and laundry softener, earthly and real.

“You wanted to try it. Because you are alone.”

Sherlock nods, back pushed against the mattress, shivering from head to toe at the sudden return of contact.

“I got pregnant accidentally. Rubber broke, you know how it is.”

Sherlock would like to say that he doesn’t but her eyes are so close, so captivating that he stares into them and stays quiet.

“After I found out, there wasn’t a moment of remorse, not a second of thought about termination. I could finally have something of my own. The man was just a client, in town for a day, never to be heard of again. I could keep the child and no one could have a say into how I raised it. _No one_.”

She leans in, her breasts brushing against his chest through the thin dressing gown.

“You are searching for something alike, something to call your own, only yours and to which no one can say how you should keep it. But you won’t find what you are looking for with me.”

 

 

An hour later, he is crouched in an alley, the tourniquet pulled tight around his arm, the sweet burn of the drug coursing through his veins, the woman’s words like fire inside his belly, incinerating his insides worse than any narcotic.

 

 

\\\

He writes to her. She keeps close contact, describes every detail of her child’s life but never sends him pictures. He guesses it would be too intimate. She signs each of her letters the same, with a sprawling beautiful hand,

_Always yours, Irene._

His address changes so often it would be reasonable to assume that she would not be able to keep up. But every letter finds him and he devours each of them, a temporary escape from the dingy flats and pointlessness of the everyday that is only numbed by the regular occasions of a baggy pushed in his hand, cash exchanging owners and it’s like a light switch is turned on inside his head.

He can think again.

He phones Jim, who has left a message on his answering machine, only has a few seconds to catch the rushed voice on the other end, a whispered address and then a click as Jim hangs up.

The address is a warehouse and the click has come from a pay phone Jim is leaning against, cigarette dangling from his mouth, several smoked buds littering the ground by his feet.

“Took you long enough,” Jim says as he claps his hands on Sherlock’s arms. “I need your help.”

He is dressed in a suit, expensive one at that, with a hideous decorative tie and a flower in his buttonhole. He smells clean and musky, mixture of soaps and cologne, a hint of steak dinner he has finished by tapping his mouth against the handkerchief poking from his breast pocket.

“You’ve climbed up the social ladder,” Sherlock snickers. “That tie is awful.”

Jim laughs as well.

“A little get-to-know-me present from the new boss. I’m afraid the MI6 doesn’t have a personal shopper.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes.

“If I wanted to work for the government, I’d go to my brother.”

“But you wouldn’t be working for the government,” Jim corrects. “You’d be working for me. Mycroft never has to know about this. It’s very unlikely he ever would. He is not omnipotent, you know.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“Don’t tell him that. He’d come crashing down.”

Jim smirks.

“Follow me,” he gestures towards a door.

They walk into the warehouse, the doors closing behind them with a loud clang. Several armed men are standing at ease around a magnificent car, its front door hanging open and a large dent on the bonnet.

Sherlock looks at the car, then to Jim standing next to him with his hands in his pockets, humming low under his breath.

“Go on then,” he says. “Do your thing. Deduce what happened,” and continues to whistle.

Sherlock glances at the men holding their army machine guns, holsters with handguns balanced on their hips, arms thicker than his head.

He flicks his magnifying glass open and turns towards the car.

 

 

Jim’s eyes gleam as he explains how the car was started by pulling out the wires and then trying to make the hit and run look like the car just smashed into a wall.

“Can’t control a body flying over your bonnet once,” he says and points at the dent. “He hit the victim so that she first flew against the windshield, then slid down the bonnet. She was still on the car when he smashed it against the wall to cover the first hit.”

“She?”

James has a mischievous tune in his voice.

“Long blonde hair in the fan grille. Could also be a very long-haired man but unlikely taken the texture and the aroma of certain hair products women favour attached even to a single strand.”

Sherlock taps the bonnet where the blonde hairs are clearly visible in the blaring lights of the car.

“Still the old Sherlock,” Jim chuckles and smacks him on the back.

He leads him out of the warehouse, clicking his fingers so that the gunmen scatter around across the room, one jumping in the car and turning it on, other two running to the opposite wall to pull open another door. The car disappears through it into the dark, the two men following close behind.

The men left in the warehouse close the door behind them with a bang.

“What was that about, Jim?” Sherlock asks as they make their way towards the pay phone, a Jaguar suddenly having appeared across the road, another faceless man standing next to it with keys in his hand.

Jim whistles a light tune with his face up to the starlit sky.

“Oh, just a little… incident with another agent.”

He takes the keys from the man and jumps on the driver’s seat. He waves Sherlock in and turns on the engine. The car roars under them like its namesake about to jump on its prey. Jim steps on the gas paddle and they shoot off down the street.

Driving with his arm over the open window, Jim turns to look at Sherlock sitting next to him.

“Would you like to do this? Help me out every once in a while? Nothing big. Just… little stuff every once in a while. Very hush hush though. Can’t have everyone finding out we use consulting detectives to catch the bad guys. You’d soon be courted by every country in Europe and abroad.”

“Exactly the reason why I don’t work for my brother.”

“But you’d do it for me?” Jim asks. “For an old friend?”

Sherlock looks at him for a moment, then nods, but doesn’t hear much of what Jim says after that. The words he used to describe him keep on turning inside his head throughout the night and the next day when he stumbles upon a crime scene, head full of cocaine and his arm still throbbing with the pleasure-pain of a needle piercing the skin. He is arrested for disturbing a crime scene and for insulting several officers when he yells and points at the evidence that is “clearly there you blind idiots between the flowerpots she hid it there before she jumped herself it was a suicide not a murder hands off me you pricks!”

The next morning, his head clearer and his back sore from sleeping on the uncomfortable cot in a cell at New Scotland Yard, a grey-haired Detective Inspector by the name of Lestrade comes in to tell him that he has made bail (from the said DI’s pocket) and he is free to go.

Standing on his wobbling feet, trying to hold his head up high, Sherlock meets the stare of the man leaning against the doorframe, a pondering look on his face, takes a step forward suddenly and blocks Sherlock’s way.

“You wanna work for us?”

 

 

 

**2010**

There is a massive crowd and surprisingly even more policemen gathered round the building. It’s like a fair, the sunny weather having lured the people out and with the hope of a show in the air the only thing missing are the popcorn stands. The noise hurts his ears and he feels trapped in the crowd.

“Sherlock, good to have you here,” Lestrade runs to him and shakes his hand. “We’re really in deep with this one.”

“Aren’t you always?” Sherlock pulls out a pair of gloves and blows in them before snapping them on.

A man standing in the shadowy hall of the apartment building hears him and gives him a mean look along his hawk-like nose.

“You know Anderson?” Lestrade says desperately.

“Yes, how nice to see you again,” Sherlock tells the stairs behind Anderson, already crossing the floor to start climbing.

Anderson crowds in front of him and stares him down.

“This is my crime scene, do you hear? You will do as I say and you won’t steal any evidence, understood?”

“Oh, Anderson,” Sherlock doesn’t spare a glance at him, “when have I ever done what you say?”

Anderson looks to Lestrade for help.

“Detective Inspector?”

“Hey, Collins! Keep it down a notch, will you?” Lestrade shouts to the nearest constable. “And scatter the crowd, that’s what you’ve got the tape for!”

He steers Sherlock towards the doorway despite Anderson’s angry muttering.

“And here’s someone you haven’t met yet!” Lestrade raises his voice as a man with neatly trimmed light hair and dressed in the blue forensics suit Sherlock despises appears at the top of the stairs and waves at Lestrade.

“Sherlock, this is…”

“Irrelevant,” Sherlock interrupts and climbs upstairs, passing the man standing on the landing and walks directly to the flat with its door wide open and policemen gathered around but staying as far away from the door as possible.

The flies hit him first. Then there’s the smell. What was once the earthly shell of a 31-year-old man from Liverpool has now been lying on its face in the abandoned flat for two months and is harvested with flies.

Pinching his lips together, Sherlock approaches the body and whips out his magnifying glass. Lestrade and Anderson follow slowly behind, Lestrade more bothered by the smell, Anderson snarling at Sherlock through gritted teeth and trying to breathe through his mouth at the same time. His face goes green and he runs to the window.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks.

Anderson, trying to look intimidating and determined, gulps at the tone and stammers,

“Opening the window, it’s really hot in here.”

“Your comfort comes second to my ability to hear my own thoughts. So shut up, Anderson, and don’t move.”

He turns back to the corpse, tries to wave away the flies and lowers his face towards the rotting foot. A slight breeze makes the newspapers piled near flutter and the noise grows. He turns around angrily to tell Anderson off, but it’s not him, it’s the blond man.

“Excuse me!” he bellows over the noise.

The man spares a quick glance at him before he pushes himself half out through the window to wave at the policemen gathered outside.

“Hey, hey!”

The noises quieten down and the man leans back in slightly. As he talks he rises to his toes, balancing up carefully, stretching his back, and Sherlock’s eyes scan over him.

  _Army man, went to war, got shot, at least 10 years in the army, five of which abroad, leftie, an only child, a doctor, specialised in surgery_.

“Sorry, boys, but we’re in the middle of a murder investigation here and I know you are an invaluable part of it, but we have a consultant here who needs some peace and quiet to solve this one. Now, it’s really hot in here and the stiff is really starting to stink up the place. So if you could just keep it down for, like, 5 minutes?”

“Yeah, no problem, John!” the constables answer from the street.

_John._

Outside, the police are finally doing their job by scattering the crowd, somehow keeping quiet at the same time. The man pulls himself back in and gives Sherlock a dazzling smile.

“It’s always possible that there is more than one solution,” he says brightly.

Sherlock turns around, muttering about the futility of politeness.

 

 

He sees him later, after he has embarrassed the whole Yard once more by finding the essential piece of string that points the evidence towards the jealous sister-in-law. Anderson looks murderous, Lestrade is busy calling in the rest of the forensics to find the remaining pieces of string, but John stares at him like the second coming and says,

“Amazing!”

He is still deep crimson when he is standing outside the building, inspecting the crowd of policemen between Lestrade’s waving arms, looking at John’s easy smile and wrinkles around his eyes as he throws his head back and laughs.

It comes so naturally to him, that smile, that calmness and easiness around people. Everyone is laughing around him, banging him on the back and saying his name like it’s a praise, an indication of a higher rank.

_John Watson._

“What?”

John Watson is standing outside his door, the landlady Mrs Hudson hovering behind him, looking slightly timid.

“You’re well-guarded,” John chuckles.

“Apparently not,” Sherlock retorts and shoots daggers at the old lady, who retreats quickly and patters down the stairs to her flat. John stays still, peeking into the flat under Sherlock’s outstretched arm.

“What?” Sherlock repeats.

John hands him a folder he has been hugging against his chest.

“Greetings from the Yard.”

Sherlock snatches the folder and strides back into the flat, sits at his desk and doesn’t pay any mind to anything surrounding him anymore.

But he leaves the door open.

John takes it as an invitation, though not a warm one, and crosses the threshold silently. There’s papers everywhere, books, chemistry equipment in the kitchen, the sofa is covered with evidence boxes and the wallpaper above it is hidden under newspaper clippings and red pieces of strings connecting several of them together. There is a picture of a man sitting surrounded by sharp-looking younger men, but there’s nothing left of the man’s face but punctured paper mush.

Sherlock has been throwing darts.

John stares at the wall, enthralled by the clippings and photographs.

“So you really do this kind of collage thing, eh?” he asks quietly.

Sherlock jumps, clearly having forgotten someone else is in the room.

John has suddenly been appearing on every crime scene Sherlock has been invited to as well, and every time Sherlock makes a deduction, John expresses his admiration with another praise and makes him blush.

He glares at John, places the folder with its contents on the table when he sees John has something to say.

“You missed the meeting.”

Sherlock squints.

“We had one this morning. About the case. We waited half an hour for you.”

“Lestrade sent his dogsbody to see how I’m doing? Lovely. Well, I’m sure nobody missed me. You can go back, errand boy, and tell him I’m fine, not on any drugs and almost solved the case.”

He waits for a reaction but nothing comes. John is still staring at the wall, though he has been listening, Sherlock can see it from his neck. His eyes slide lower over his back, admiring the muscles and the posture, the evident power there.

_He’s still keeping on the army regimen._

John finally tears his gaze away from the photograph of the latest victim’s bloody corpse to stare at Sherlock who is busy trying to look as if he has not been staring but leafing intently through a 20-year-old phone book he has dug up from one of the evidence boxes on the table.

When the silence becomes unbearable, he folds and looks at John. The softness of his eyes surprises him. He looks for all the world like he actually likes what he sees.

Sherlock clears his throat.

“You’re still here.”

“I’m still here,” John whispers.

He licks his lips ( _an unconscious tick, does it every time he is nervous, anxious or angry, which one is he now?_ ), eyes never leaving Sherlock’s.

“Why?” Sherlock asks, voice suddenly rough.

Another lick.

“I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner.”

Sherlock’s hand slips and he almost drops the phonebook.

“You do eat, don’t you?”

“Occasionally, yes, when I remember, when my landlady insists,” Sherlock mumbles, pretending to look for something, anything, among the chaos on his table, so he doesn’t have to see John’s face.

He curses himself. It’s a ruse, has to be. He should have torn the man apart where he stood the moment he opened door. Now John has the upper hand, he has seen him affected.

Eyes cold and stormy, he lifts his head to stare John down, but is suddenly completely dumbfounded at the sight of him. He is still smiling softly, actually waiting for an answer. Not mocking, never mocking.

Sherlock clears his throat again.

“There is this thing I promised Lestrade I would go to. An auction. Big thing, apparently. Chief Superintendent and some other idiots will be there as well, and Lestrade insists I show my face. Threatened to cut me off the cases for a month if I didn’t. Formal affair. Requires a tux and a bowtie. Tedious. I have to be _nice_.”

John chuckles and beams at him.

“But,” Sherlock continues, “I think it couldn’t be too awful if you accompanied me. I’m sure there will be food as well.”

 

 

\\\

John is waiting outside his flat, standing by the door to shelter himself from the slight drizzle. He is dressed formally, black tux looking like it has grown on his skin, that’s how well it fits him.

It takes Sherlock a second to hear the cabbie shout they’ve arrived, and when he does, he stumbles to open the door and let John in as fast as he can so he won’t get wet. John climbs in, accidentally sits on Sherlock’s hand, chuckles softly as he apologises. Sherlock’s cheeks go scarlet, he mutters the address to the cabbie and retreats to the opposite corner of the taxi.

He has no idea what to say, but John seems comfortable in the silence, gazing out of the window at London passing by, wet with rain and gleaming. Sherlock stares at him and still cannot believe this man is his date, that he has _voluntarily_ asked him out.

They find Lestrade from the door where he is talking with the Chief Superintendent. He looks surprised by who Sherlock has with him but at John’s easy expression and relaxed body language he turns back and introduces the two to his boss.

A photographer jumps out from the crowd.

“Picture, Mr Holmes! With the Chief Superintendent!”

Sherlock scowls and turns to Lestrade with a pleading expression but the photographer drags him away from the Detective Inspector and John standing giggling next to him.

Marlon Harris, the Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, is an elderly man who favours 80s large plastic glasses and combs his hair back to give himself a youthful look. All to emphasise his receding hairline.

He shakes Sherlock’s hand enthusiastically and smiles at the camera with his teeth bared.

“Wait a moment, please!”

John steps between them and the camera and takes out a white handkerchief from his pocket. He folds it into a square and places it in Sherlock’s breast pocket.

“I want a copy of this one,” he says to the camera man, who clearly doesn’t mind at all about the moment going on between this unknown man and the one whose photo will ensure a nice commission for him. He lifts his camera slightly, pondering whether a picture of the man now stroking the handkerchief in place would sell.

“There, all better,” John says with a final sweep over Sherlock’s coat. He grins at the blush on Sherlock’s face, which is quickly covered by a scowl as his hand is seized back into a shake and the flashlights begin to flare.

“Then one with the Detective Inspector, if you please, Mr Holmes!” the photographer bellows.

Lestrade leaves John with an apology and steps next to Sherlock, who sighs deep in relief when the smell of Harris’ awful aftershave moves away from him.

The shutter flicks and he is free to escape back to John.

“You like him.”

Sherlock stares.

“Lestrade,” John clarifies. “You relaxed the minute he stepped in. You practically leaned into him.”

“He is less annoying than most of the Yard,” Sherlock sniffs.

John grins.

“You like him,” he chirps. “And you can’t convince me otherwise.”

 

 

\\\

He walks slowly behind John, admiring the sight.

There is not a hint of bare skin anywhere, the bowtie sitting tight around John’s neck and the jacket covering his back but his muscles are visible, and his face, enthralled by an original copy of Thomas Hardy displayed on one of the tables, _oh God, anyone could get lost in that face_.

Several people are. John peaking at the book, careful not to breathe so as to not do any harm to the priceless item and with his back slightly bent to emphasise how well the jacket hugs his form, is a sight and as men and women pass him in the hall their eyes linger on the same spots Sherlock’s were moments before. Sherlock gives them each a furious glare, some of them already too intoxicated to pay any mind to him, the Freak of the Yard, but some scuttle away with a frightened look.

“God must be a writer to have so many words,” John says breathlessly as he finally leans away from the book and turns around.

“So you’re a writer,” Sherlock manages to cough out, almost caught staring at John’s bum.

John smiles.

“I didn’t say that, but yes. I am.”

He moves to the next book, Shakespeare, and it looks like his heart has stopped at the sight.

Sherlock feels the same.

“Have I read anything from you?”

He is in love with that soft chuckle.

“Hopefully not!” John says to the First Folio. “I just have a blog I write stuff into. I’ve had good feedback, but to publish something? No.”

Snarling at the desk sergeant he knows to shaganything that walks with two feet as he goes past and gives John a scan Sherlock’s eyes catch two men standing few steps ahead of them, heads together, whispering and glancing at them as if trying to confirm something. No, glancing at _him_. His stomach sinks, but he tries to stare the men down and they walk away hurriedly when they realise they have been discovered.

A hand grasps his chin and a voice says,

“Here.”

He focuses his eyes on the face in front of him.

“Me,” John smiles. “Your date?”

Sherlock blushes and tries to hide his smile into a mutter.

“I haven’t had a chance to practise the social niceties in a while.”

John’s smile widens.

“Well, then. You can start by getting us some champagne.”

He leans in and whispers quietly before strolling away,

“I’ll be outside.”

 

 

\\\

“Freak!” Donovan greets, eyes slightly distant, breath sour. “I see that John finally did the smart thing and baled on you.”

The people gathered around the buffet smirk and giggle, eager for a show. Sherlock calmly pours out two glasses of champagne, before even glancing at Donovan’s bleary eyes that seem to have a difficult time concentrating on him.

“And I see that you believe you still have a rendez-vouz with Anderson by the punch bowl. I wouldn’t hold my breath. He is behind the large ficus in the hall, snogging that clerk trainee with blonde hair and huge breasts.”

Donovan’s eyes grow dark and her face turns pale. Sherlock picks up the glasses.

“I, however, have a glass of champagne to deliver,” he says as a farewell.

He has only taken a few steps, when he hears stomping behind him and turning around sees Sally storm off towards the entrance hall’s extremely bushy ficus that is shaking slightly.

Outside, John is standing on the steps leading to the huge garden, gazing at the stars. Sherlock presses the glass into his hand and looks up as well.

“Thank you,” John takes a sip. “You know, I once tried to count them all.”

He draws in a breath and squints his eyes, trying to remember.

“I actually got to 1895. Then I fell asleep. Guess my powers of concentration aren’t very good,” he chuckles.

“You are exceptionally odd.”

John turns to look at him and measures him from head to toe. He slides his forefinger across Sherlock’s collar.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re a bit peculiar yourself.”

“To put it nicely.”

“People aren’t always nice?” John asks, finger sliding on Sherlock’s shoulder now.

“People are never nice to me. Then again, I’m never nice to them. They only deserve it.”

They are standing chest to chest, John dragging his finger over Sherlock’s jacket, drawing patterns on the fabric. His eyes are staring into Sherlock’s, slightly hooded, and it’s not the champagne. He has only taken the one sip.

“Pick a shape,” Sherlock breathes quietly over his mouth.

“A what?” John seems to be having trouble concentrating on anything but Sherlock’s lips.

“Pick a shape. An animal, anything you like.” Sherlock moves his free hand to John’s hip.

John’s concentration clearly kicks back a notch, but he swallows and says,

“A palm tree.”

Sherlock moves behind him and slides his hand over John’s stomach to rest on his other hipbone and stares up into the sky. Squinting, he steps in and takes John’s hand. Pointing with the index finger, he connects a group of stars to draw a palm tree that stays glimmering in the sky.

He steps back slightly to give John space but when John turns round, face full of wonder and smiling like a child at Christmas, he envelopes John in his arms.

“It’s pointless, what we know about space,” he says quietly in John’s ear. “Deleted it all before it had time to cram my memory drive. But it helps me sometimes, finding patterns where there’s seemingly none to find.”

“Do it again,” John whispers, leaning into Sherlock’s warmth. “Do it again!”

Sherlock’s hand rests on the small of John’s back while he draws him an elephant, an octopus and a giraffe, and it stays there as he escorts John back inside where the auction is about to start.

 

 

\\\

“Well, it wasn’t all too bad.”

“You think?” Sherlock mutters, fringe dripping on the pavement with every step he takes.

His shirt front is soaking wet with punch and there’s bits of fruit in his hair. The evening had ended with Donovan storming into the room, throwing a full glass of punch in his face and stomping back out.

He has tried to mop up the mess with the handkerchief in his pocket before realising what he is doing. Offering the sodding mess back to its owner, John had just chuckled and asked him to keep it, to bring good luck. So the handkerchief is back in his pocket, as wet and dripping as his hair.

They are walking along the Embankment, the wind from the Thames shaking Sherlock’s wet curls and making him shiver. John is strolling languidly by him, attempting very hard not to laugh. He seems comfortable and warm in just his shirt, his dinner jacket thrown over his arm, his bowtie finally abandoned and hanging from his trouser pocket. He has unbuttoned his collar and sighs deep at the cooling wind on his skin.

He slows down at the line of restaurants by the tube station and draws a book from under his jacket.

“Here.”

Sherlock stares at the item John is pushing at him.

“You got me a book?”

“Don’t get excited. It was the cheapest one on the menu. I can’t believe how some people can afford to spend so much on books, no matter how old.”

Sherlock takes it, flips it open and reads the title page.

“This is about the solar system,” he groans.

“Yes.”

He is not mocking, only smiling. Encouraging. It takes a moment for Sherlock to remember what one usually says in situations like this.

“Thank you.”

“Wow. You really don’t get a lot of gifts, do you?” John smiles and flings his jacket over his shoulder, continuing to stroll up the hill, inspecting the lighted restaurants inviting them in with their enticing smells of cooking.

He turns around suddenly and steps in front of Sherlock who stumbles to a halt.

“Would it be completely out of bounds if I kissed you?” John asks, like he is talking to a shop clerk at Tesco’s looking for tomatoes.

Sherlock’s world goes into somersaults.

“I… I…” he stammers.

John’s face comes closer.

“I’m not as good at deducing as you, but based on tonight I thought you perhaps wanted to be kissed?”

Sherlock is still stuttering broken sounds when John places his lips on his, a little more than a peck, mouth closed. But it lasts long, though Sherlock has forgotten how to calculate seconds and minutes. Could be a whole week he has been kissing John when they finally pull apart.

“Was,” he crows, “was that a kiss goodnight?”

“Not if you don’t want it to be.”

“I don’t,” Sherlock grasps John’s wrist. “I really don’t.”

John hums happily.

“To be fair,” he says, “the food was rather limited. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer a greasy take-away over caviar any day.”

“Chinese,” Sherlock breathes immediately, mouth as close to John’s as he can.

John rubs their noses together.

“Come on, then. Chow mein. My treat.”

He twines their fingers together and leads on towards the single Chinese restaurant on the street. The lad behind the counter perks up when he sees potential customers approach.

“I can predict the fortune cookies,” Sherlock stares at his hand in John’s.

“No you can’t.”

“Almost can.”

 

 

\\\

John makes his head feel clearer. What little has been left in the dark in his peripheral vision seems to light up now and shine like copper in the sun. He feels alive and healthy, misses drugs less and less every day, and even feels like such mundane activities as picnics on a summer day are actually a good idea.

“I’ve always loved this view,” John sighs. “Used to come here with my parents. We’d pack a lunch and spend the whole afternoon here. My dad taught me how to fly a kite and mum would help me with my homework.”

He looks at Sherlock who is lounging on the blanket, looking at the beautiful landscape but saying nothing.

John smiles at him.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asks.

“Me opening my mouth often ends with devastating results,” Sherlock pics at the grass.

“How do you know, if you haven’t tried?”

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. My lack of social graces will make me blurt out something stupid and you will reply with physical violence, more or less. Tit for tat,” Sherlock straightens his posture slightly.

“Try me,” John encourages, getting up from the blanket and leaning against the tree.

Sherlock inspects him for a moment.

“All right,” he replies and leans in closer towards him.

John’s pupils dilate slightly.

“I find you attractive,” Sherlock begins.“Your aggressiveness towards me indicates you feel the same, but the tedious rules the society has placed on wooing has forced us to keep things slow and progress in a pace defined by an unknown indicator of customs and regulations which seem to be taken as truth by all sexually active human beings on the planet. Certain rituals have to be performed before we have sex. But now my formerly non-existent desire to have intercourse has suddenly been lit to a flame and directed solely at you. I am proceeding with the said customs accordingly, but all I really want is to have you as soon as possible.”

He swallows painfully and waits.

“Are you going to punch me now?” he asks John’s shoes.

Instead, John leans in, slowly to give Sherlock time to assess the situation, and once he knows he has his permission, places his lips on Sherlock’s.

It’s nothing like the kiss outside the restaurant. It’s cooler, deeper and somehow even softer than before.

Sherlock’s eyes stay closed even after John pulls back, his head feeling like he will need extra oxygen to start the regular flow of blood again.

“How was that reaction?” John asks softly.

It looks like the landscape is reflected on John’s face, in his eyes, and Sherlock thinks his never seen anything more beautiful.

 

 

 

**2013**

He is sitting on a park bench when someone stops in front of him. He looks up and a little girl with red hair and tartan dress stares straight at him. She’s just tall enough to reach his chin now that he is sitting down.

They look at each other in silence until the girl opens her mouth.

“You look funny,” her voice rings out and it sounds like hundreds of small bells being played.

Sherlock stares.

“Well, you don’t look too boring yourself,” he replies finally.

“Boring is not the opposite of funny”, the girl pipes up.

“I’ve always thought it was, taken that nothing I’ve ever found funny has been boring and everything I’ve found boring has not been funny,” Sherlock says, closing his notebook. “What do you think is the opposite of funny?”

“Unfunny.”

“That’s not even a word.”

“Yes it is! Mama says you can make everything nice unnice by putting a prafix in front if it.”

“Prefix,” Sherlock corrects. “And where is your mother?”

Shuffle of shoes approach them and a pair of loafers stop next to the girl’s. This time Sherlock has to tilt his neck to see the face.

“What, no hug for mama?” Irene spreads her arms.

Her hair is in a loose bun, skirt and jumper covering a lot more than the dressing gown had the last time he saw her.

She looks homely and calm.

He scrambles to his feet and squeezes her tightly. She laughs in his ear and kisses his cheekbone.

 

 

\\\

They take a walk round the park, Harriet running ahead of them among the pigeons that don’t seem to be the slightest disturbed by the small girl.

“How do you like her?” Irene asks, slipping her arm through his.

“She’s beautiful,” Sherlock says.

He turns to Irene.

“But what else am I supposed to say to you, her mother?”

Irene laughs and leads him towards a small bench.

“You could always tell the truth. You know I appreciate that about you.”

She sits down with a sigh and stretches her feet forward.

“Looking after her keeps me on my feet all day.”

She glances at him briefly when she sees him move uncomfortably from the corner of her eye.

“Not like that. I’ve been done with that life for years. I’m a nurse now.”

She rubs her ankles.

“Don’t know where I could get shoes that don’t kill me on those 12-hour-shifts. Thought these stumps would have the strength to carry my body around after been trained on high-quality Italian leather for so long.”

She snickers.

“I still have a pair. To remind me of the old days.”

Harriet runs to them, stops to stand in front of Sherlock for a moment, then runs off giggling again.

“You still don’t say much,” Irene notes, leaning against the bench. “Drugs seem to be treating you well though. You look really good.”

“Like you, I haven’t taken part in that kind of life in years. I only have one drug in my life now. And it’s not recreational.”

Irene looks puzzled.

“I met someone.”

Her face brightens. She grasps his shoulder and her exclamation of joy makes Sherlock smile as well.

“And it seems that against all odds he likes me as well,” he snickers.

She leans back against the bench with a sigh of contentment, shaking her head slightly, like she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. She grows solemn when Sherlock suddenly asks,

“Should I marry him?”

They stay quiet for a long time, watching Harriet sitting in the middle of the quadrangle and pick up sticks and stones to build something by her feet.

“I mean,” Sherlock continues hurriedly, “I’m more reliable now than a few years back. Hell, I’m more reliable now than I’ve been in my entire life! He has a steady income and he can help me with the cases. We get along well. Is there any reason for us not to do it?”

“There always is at least one,” Irene says quietly.

She looks at him and suddenly Sherlock recognizes what he saw in her eyes over ten years ago when the mask of a high-quality prostitute fell from her face with the first wail of her child in the next room.

She looks vulnerable, like all the pain in the world has been poured over her, and yet her eyes blaze with strength at the same time, strength that comes from knowing what you do is right even though it may hurt.

“But with enough good reasons, what do a few bad ones matter?”

 

 

\\\

Sherlock runs all the way from the hospital to the restaurant, barely stopping to catch his breath outside the door. He stumbles in, all eyes turning to him, staring, except the ones that have barely glanced up at his entrance and gone back to stare at the table. Ignoring the waiter, he walks to the table and stops to look at John, hands crossed on the table, face tight.

“John, I’m sorry. I was at Bart’s and… I lost track of time. Again. And my phone was…”

His hand goes to his coat pocket.

“Anyway, happy birthday.”

He lays a red-leather notebook on the table. He stands still for a moment, eyes moving rapidly over the cover, then he dives into his pocket.

“You’ll need a pen.”

He finds one from one of the pockets inside his coat and places it next to the book on the table. John has not moved, hands still resting on the table, posture stiff, but he looks at the book and then up at Sherlock.

He doesn’t say a word.

“See,” Sherlock stammers nervously, licking his lips, “I thought you would need something to write things down when you’re on the move. Words. At the auction, you said that God must be a writer because we have so many words. You said that. And notebook is always better than a blog.”

The scorn finally vanishes and is replaced by surprise.

“I thought you’d have deleted it by now.”

“I never delete anything about you,” Sherlock breathes.

John looks at the notebook again and touches his finger on the leather gently. He picks the book up and leafs through it, presses it to his nose and says shyly,

“Thank you.”

“I thought that because you think God invented all the words I could start off the book and write ‘delusional’ there, but I thought that might be… rude.”

John smacks his arm with the book. He is still looking at it lovingly, when Sherlock goes down on his knees with a rush of cloth and is suddenly very close.

“John, I need data. Does this warrant a long-term commitment? Our relationship. I have tried to analyse it but it’s futile to deduce without justifiable data.”

John’s mouth works silently for a moment, before he laughs quietly.

“Trust you to come up with a proposal when I least expect it.”

He clears his throat, rolls the pen around between his fingers for a moment.

“Data? Proof?”

“Yes,” Sherlock breathes eagerly.

John eyes the table like it could give him the answer. Clearly it can, because he turns to Sherlock with a pondering sigh.

“How big is the universe?” he asks.

“Infinite,” Sherlock answers immediately.

“How do you know?”

“Because it said so in the book you gave me.”

John looks surprised again.

_Ah. He thought I deleted that as well._

“But it hasn’t been proven, you know,” John continues.

“No, I know.”

“Then why do you believe it?”

“Because you do, and I believe you.”

John makes a sound of affirmation but shrugs his shoulders.

“Same goes with love, I guess,” he admits.

Sherlock looks lost.

“Now,” John rests his arm on Sherlock’s shoulder, “you say you believe me. That you trust me. But the part that you don’t know, is if I want to marry you.”

He presses his forehead against Sherlock’s.

“So, all the data, all the proof you need, is my word and you will know?”

 

 

\\\

_I believe congratulations are in order._

_Do bugger off, Mycroft. SH_

_And stop spying on my dates! SH_

_What, an afterthought? Oh my, this must be serious if you only just realised that the restaurant’s surveillance video was streamed live to my laptop yesterday._

_Of course it’s serious! I’m marrying him! SH_

_I know you, Sherlock. You would get engaged just for a case and break someone’s heart once it’s convenient._

_Funny you should know about hearts. Considering you don't have one. SH_

_So I take it I’m not invited?_

_John insists on your presence. SH_

_I shall ensure personally that Patrick is in charge of the catering. You have always preferred a five-star Michelin chef._

 

 

\\\

Sherlock wakes with a strange feeling that he has grown several extra limbs during the night. Pair of legs have wrapped themselves around his, and he feels like he is being smothered by an octopus. The ache and the smugness flaming in his stomach remind him of something from the past, something intimate, wonderful.

The first morning with John.

He smirks to the ceiling. He has his arm thrown over his eyes, so he takes a moment to analyse his surroundings using his other senses. Taste of champagne still sour on his tongue, the smell of two aftershaves and the heady combination of two breaths in an unaired room in his nostrils. The ache and the smugness are familiar, the smirk growing wider when he catches a glimpse of dark fingermarks on his wrist. But the happiness is something new, something bigger that wasn’t there the first morning.

He dares a peak, and sees the glimmer of gold on a stumpy ring finger, a hand laying on his chest, and similar finger marks decorating the arm attached to the man sleeping soundly on his side.

John looks so strange and so familiar. Sherlock calculates every fraction of his body he can see, and peaks under the covers to look at the parts he can’t see. John’s legs are coiled tightly around his, his torso attached to Sherlock’s side, his other hand hidden somewhere under his body. He will be sore when he wakes up, and not just from sleeping on his arm.

Sherlock smirks again, taking a second look at the wedding band gleaming on John’s finger. Ringed, marked, spoken for, committed, _oh God, he is mine now._ _I own a person, and he owns me._

He squeezes John’s fingers (John snuffles against his neck softly and squeezes back reflexively), gets up and pats into the kitchen without bothering to put on his dressing gown. He fills the kettle with water and rummages around in the fridge that Mycroft has stacked full of necessities the day before.

John will want tea. And toast. Possibly juice. And eggs.

The kettle clicks off and he pours the water into a pot with some tea leaves.

“Having fun?”

The tea sloshes on the floor by Irene’s feet, Irene, who is leaning against the doorframe, inspecting Sherlock’s nudity with gleaming eyes.

“Irene, what the hell?” Sherlock hisses.

“God, you look _owned_ ,” she breathes.

“Irene, get out. It’s my ---“

“The morning after, I know. Just came by to see how the happy couple is taking their first steps.”

“Well, we can’t really do that with you around,” he whispers, glancing round the corner to see if John has appeared. The door to the bedroom is still closed.

Irene’s fingers brush over a bitemark on his shoulder and he shivers.

“Perhaps I was wrong back then, not going through with it.”

“What?” Sherlock’s voice is even quieter now that he definitely has heard the bedsprings creak.

“You were so broken back then,” she continues, eyes drifting down with the movement of her finger, lower and lower towards his pelvis. “I just couldn’t take advantage of it. Anyway, if we had done it, you would have been ready to say yes to anything, even staying with me and taking care of Harriet. And you wouldn’t want that to have happened.”

She looks up at him.

“Would you?”

He swallows.

“Sherlock?” John calls from the bedroom.

Sherlock’s brain kicks back in.

“Irene, please go.”

Without another word, Irene turns around and walks out of the door. On the landing, she glances back over her shoulder, suddenly looking very sad. The door closes behind her just when John emerges from the bedroom, dressing gown on, ruffling his hair.

“Morning. Were you talking to someone?” he asks.

“No, no,” Sherlock rushes over to peck his nose. “Just muttering to myself.”

 

 

 

**2015**

At the clank of the letterbox, Sherlock trudges downstairs to see whether the taxidermy supplies he ordered have finally arrived. No parcel in sight (he is really going to call that company and tell them off), he grabs the few letters with a huff and makes his way back upstairs.

A few bills, a medical journal for John and a letter for him. He recognises Irene’s handwriting and almost drops the rest of the mail.

She hasn’t written in a while. After inviting her to the wedding, receiving a declining RSVP and then being scared half to death by seeing the woman in his kitchen on the morning after his marriage he has not heard from her since.

Not that he has had the time to write to her either. Jim has recruited him as a kind of on-and-off consultant and between assignments from him as well as the cases from Lestrade he has been keeping busy. As promised, Jim does not contact him often and keeps their association tightly under lid, partly to protect himself, partly for Sherlock’s personal safety.

They never exchange any emails, letters or other paperwork that could be traced back to them, but Sherlock writes each of their encounters into a notebook he keeps separate from the other one he uses to write down details and clues from the cases.

They keep their communication to the minimum. Jim phones when he needs him and they stay out of each other’s lives outside assignments.

He hasn’t been in touch lately either. Sherlock inspects Irene’s letter, reads the words voraciously, starved for contact with his old friends. With John gone away for two weeks to visit his family in the north, the flat is quiet and deserted. Sherlock has noticed he has already begun to talk to himself in order to have _some_ sounds in the flat. There have been cases, mediocre ones, none of which have taken more than a day to solve. Then he has been free to go back home to an empty flat, empty bed and stay inside his even emptier head.

He glances at his phone. The battery is close to dying. John had phoned the previous day, informing him they’d be going on a camping trip and there would be no cellular service.

After that, there has been no reason to charge the phone.

He turns back to the letter when the phone suddenly starts to ring, loudly and insistently.

_Speak of the devil._

“Jim?”

“Sherlock,” Jim breathes from the other end, lowering his voice but attempting to sound cheery. “I’m in a bit of a jam, can you come here right away”?

‘Here’ is another warehouse. Jim seems to be favouring them lately.

“Sherlock, I’m in deep shit,” Jim greets, tussling his hair and sighing deep.

He opens the door to the warehouse. This time there are no muscular men with machine guns hanging around the place. Just a bloody body in the middle of the floor, lying on a piece of dusty carpet.

Sherlock freezes.

“You’re the only one I can trust,” Jim says somewhere far away. “It was just a misunderstanding. The guy pulled a gun at me. It was self-defence.”

Sherlock turns to stare at him.

“What can I do?” he asks. “Surely MI6 has a way to handle these situations. You must have friends high up! Your superiors ---“

“For fuck’s sakes, man! I don’t work for the MI6!” Jim bellows.

His hand goes to his hair again.

“I’m an operative, working under a foreign government.”

Any plan Sherlock could have come up with goes out of the window. He turns back to the corpse, now going through any possible means of how to get rid of it quickly and efficiently, with the least bit of mess. Jim has called him in for a reason. With his knowledge of chemistry they could melt the body in less than half an hour and have it done with.

The other reason is not that Jim trusts him. It’s the fact that now they have no choice _but_ to trust one another.

Jim has made him an adversary.

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, will be after my arse if it comes out that this happened on the job,” Jim says.

His voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away.

Sherlock rubs his palms over his face and finally turns to look back at him.

Jim’s eyes have gone dark, determined. He knows Sherlock has realised he has no choice but to help him.

“What do we do?”

 

 

\\\

The body stuffed in the boot, they drive away in Jim’s car towards a location Sherlock knows. The best way to get rid of a body at such short notice is to burn it. Chemical incineration would take too long to perform since they don’t have the necessary supplies and making a concoction would cost them valuable time. Going out to buy gallons of ammonia at a time would be remembered and used against them later.

So they’re going to an abandoned animal cemetery where they used to burn deceased cats and dogs.

They are silent throughout the drive, Sherlock only occasionally giving Jim instructions on where to turn. Jim had insisted he would drive, so Sherlock sits next to him and stares out of the window, trying not to think of everything that might go wrong.

The first thing that does is another car that appears next to theirs and tries to push them off the road.

Jim curses and steers away, avoiding the next bump just in time and hitting on the gas. They shoot away, the black car right behind them.

“Old acquaintances,” Jim says before Sherlock has the chance to ask.

The car dashes along the deserted road. Sherlock barely has time to register his surroundings, realising they’re nearing the docks, before the black car is by them again and the man sitting next to the driver has a gun in his hand and he is aiming it at Jim’s head. Panicking, Sherlock pushes them both down under the dashboard just when a bullet whistles over their ears, chattering both windows on its way.

Jim pulls a handgun from his coat pocket and throws it in Sherlock’s lap.

“Shoot!” he bellows.

Sherlock stares at the gun on his knees and this time it’s Jim who pushes his head down to avoid another bullet.

“Shoot, damn you!”

He picks up the gun, but doesn’t take aim. Instead, he throws it in Jim’s lap and indicates that he will do the driving, Jim can damn well shoot as much as he likes. Jim curses again, lets go of the wheel suddenly and begins to empty his gun through the broken window. The third bullet hits the man with the gun on the shoulder and the next one goes through the driver’s neck. Limp like a ragdoll he slouches over the wheel. Without anyone to steer the car, it roars towards a pier and flies into the cold water.

Jim hits the breaks and the car screeches to a halt.

After a few seconds of silence, Sherlock opens the door and scrambles out. Jim yells after him, trying to tell him to wait, but Sherlock is out and a bullet comes whistling through the air from a bush and hits him on the side. He falls down in the dirt with a yelp but before the gunman hiding in the dark has a chance to finish the job, Jim releases a series of shots over the car to where he has seen the muzzle blast. A hollow growl rises from the dark. Then it’s quiet again.

Jim sighs deeply and moves slowly into view from behind the car. He doesn’t go where Sherlock is lying on the ground but stands on the pier, watching as the black car sinks slowly into the black water.

A final _blop_ and it’s gone.

He turns around to look at Sherlock who has sat up and is inspecting the wound. It’s superficial, just a graze, but will need stitches and will probably scar.

He stands up with wobbly feet and slumps against the car. Jim is looking at him, eyes dark again, expression stony like it was when Sherlock first turned to look at him after he realised he had no choice but to help him get rid of the body.

The body that is still in the boot of Jim’s car.

He doesn’t care. Let the whole car go the same way as the other one. He doesn’t want anything to do with it.

He turns to go, his legs feeling like they will give out under him as he takes the first shaky steps.

“You’re in this now, Sherlock!” Jim bellows behind him. “You’re in!”

 

 

\\\

He can’t go to a hospital. A gun wound would raise too many questions and associating with a spy even more.

He can’t rely on John’s help either, even if he was at home. The less he knows the safer he is.

So he trudges home, takes out John’s medical bag and sitting in the tub sews the wound as best as he can.

John won’t be home until next week, ample time to let the wound heal somewhat. He can always keep a shirt on or if absolutely necessary make up a story of a case he got from his website and had to go solve on his own.

When the stitches are done and the bandage is in place, he slinks to the bedroom, presses his face into John’s pillow and waits.

 

 

John returns nine days later, happy and tired after a week in the forests with his parents, and the moment he comes through the door, Sherlock breaks. He doesn’t cry, he can’t, but he attaches himself on John, kisses every inch of him and drags him to the bedroom without answering any questions.

Let John think he has been bored, let him think Sherlock is just happy to see him like any other husband would be. Anything to keep him safe.

 

 

\\\

There is a black car parked outside the flat opposite, has been for five minutes and during that time no one has come out.

Sherlock stares at the sleek Mercedes from the gap between the blinds. A car backfires somewhere further down on the street and he jumps, making the blinds rattle.

He jumps even higher when his phone rings suddenly. The number is blocked but he knows who it is, who it _has_ to be.

“Jim,” he hisses to the phone, never minding that someone is probably listening in and he shouldn’t use names. “Don’t call me anymore.”

With that, he hangs up.

 

 

\\\

John grows worried at the sight of him the moment he sees him sitting at the window again that night, lurking in the shadows, only his hand extended to push the blinds apart.

“Sherlock?” John snaps on the light in the sitting room.

“Turn off the light!” Sherlock bellows and runs to the switch.

The room is enveloped in darkness. Sherlock listens to John’s breathing in the surrounding silence, straining to hear any unusual sounds.

_Window creaking open, safety of a gun being clicked, was that the door?_

“Sherlock?” John says again.

Sherlock looks down at him. John’s hair is standing up, his cheeks are ruddy with sleep, he is dressed in the pyjamas Sherlock gave him last Christmas, the awful fudge brown ones he bought by accident.

He is the epitome of home and safety, but at the moment he is nowhere near safe here on Baker Street. With Sherlock.

“You have to go away,” he grabs John’s elbow and tucks him toward the bedroom.

“What?” John exclaims. “Go away where? Why?”

“Don’t ask questions now, please, John,” Sherlock begs as he pulls out a suitcase from the closet and begins to stuff John’s jeans and underwear in it. He pulls the shirts out from the closet with the hangers still on them, stuffs them into the suitcase as well and goes to the bathroom to get John’s toilet bag. When he returns, John has gathered his wits and is throwing his stuff out of the suitcase.

“I am not going anywhere,” he says to Sherlock’s horrified expression.

“We have to get you away,” Sherlock hisses, dumps the small bag into the suitcase and begins to collect the trousers and shirts lying on the floor.

“Sherlock…”

“Lestrade’s should be the safest,” Sherlock pants hurriedly. “We would be endangering him as well, but he is a policeman, he knows what he is doing, he has a gun, several, if I’m not mistaken he can protect you stop throwing the clothes please John ---“

“Sherlock!” John bellows, snapping him out of the manic rant. John pulls the shirts he is holding from his grip and throws them on the bed. He takes Sherlock’s face in his hands and speaks calmly.

“Whatever it is, let me help. If it’s worse than usual, at least don’t drive me away. We can go to Mycroft. We ---“

“Mycroft can’t help,” Sherlock interrupts.

He takes John’s hands in his and kisses them.

“Please, John. I’ve done something really stupid and I have to fix it now. But I can’t do it with you here. You’ll be in too much danger. Just pack your back, call a cab and drive to Lestrade’s. I’ll explain everything later.”

With a parting kiss, he sweeps out of the door and clicks it closed.

Peeking between the blinds again, everything seems calm. He goes to the door, takes his coat and sneaks out. At least he can lure them away from the house so that John has time to leave.

Little does he know that John is standing at their bedroom window, looking after him as he walks briskly down the street.

 

 

\\\

It finally happens two days later when he is on his way to see Lestrade. He opens the door, looks both ways, steps out and turns to lock the door behind him.

“Sherlock?”

He turns round swiftly, panic rising in his stomach. A woman dressed in formal attire is standing directly behind him, with two burly men looming by her sides like gate keepers. They are not dressed as nicely as she is, but comfortably and so that they can move without restraints.

He clutches at the doorknob, knowing that the stupidest thing to do now is to barge back into the house. They can easily follow him there and corner him.

“My name is Ella Mortimer,” the woman says. “I’m a psychiatrist.”

Sherlock blinks at her, the doorknob sweaty under his palm.

“Could we have a chat?” she asks.

“About what?” he spits out, eyes darting to the men who look like they are flexing their muscles under their shirts, ready to bounce.

“You. But let’s not talk here,” she points at a car standing waiting at the kerb, its engine humming quietly, inconspicuously.

Sherlock glances at the woman again, weighing his options.

“Do I have a choice?” he asks.

“Of course you do!” she exclaims. “But I would very much like to have a little talk with you. If you’d come with us? John is very worried about you.”

That makes Sherlock see red.

“What have you done with him? He has nothing to do with this!”

The bodyguards step forward and reach their hands towards him.

“Sherlock, please, let’s not make a scene,” the woman pleads.

Sherlock kicks her in the stomach and the men are instantly on him, the driver and another man jumping out of the car and rushing towards them.

“What have you done to him?” Sherlock bellows. “Where’s my husband?”

People walking past them stop to stare, several of them gathering round them to see what the commotion is about. He turns to them and screams,

“Help me! They’re foreign operatives! They have my husband locked up somewhere! Please help me!”

As the driver takes care of the crowd, showing them something he pulls out of his pocket, speaking calmly the whole time, the two men hold Sherlock down and the woman, having been helped up by the third man who has given her a syringe from a medical bag, approaches Sherlock. She, too, is speaking calmly, giving orders to the men to steady his leg while assuring him that everything is going to be fine.

“Stay away from me,” Sherlock whispers.

She pierces the needle through his skin and presses the piston down.

It’s nothing like the drugs. It doesn’t flow like melted honey into his veins and make him feel blissed out and light as air. Before the bliss of unconsciousness sets in, it burns and sears and floods his veins, making his blood boil and feel like he is set on fire from the inside.

 

 

\\\

An annoying humming buzzes in his ear. He tries to wave it away ( _is it a fly?_ ) and his hands stop with a metallic clank only a few inches from where they are resting in his lap. He jerks awake, world swimming in front of his eyes, the humming more insistent now ( _it’s a heater_ ), sunlight pouring in through a large window, lighting up the Persian rug his bare feet are resting on.

His eyes glide up to his ankles that are covered in white fabric.

He never wears white. All his trousers are black. Except his pyjama pants, the ones John bought for him after he had worn through the last pair.

 _John_.

“Sherlock?”

He jumps upright at the voice, panic mixing with confusion and fear about what has happened to John.

His eyes meet those of the woman he met on Baker Street.

He tries to focus his gaze.

“Sorry about the restraints,” the woman says apologetically.

Then she smiles and pats her abdomen.

“You sure can kick! Thank god for pilates.”

She goes to a large desk directly in front of Sherlock and takes a clipboard and a pen from it.

“Now, should we talk?”

“You could release me first,” Sherlock mutters, his voice thick like syrup. “Then we’d be on equal footing. Well, _more_ equal. Since you could never beat me if we were just using our brains. You people always rely on physical force.”

The woman rests the clipboard against her thighs and leans against her desk.

“What kind of people are we then, Sherlock?”

“Could you stop repeating my name,” Sherlock snarls. “Saying it again and again won’t make me like you.”

“We could try,” the woman says. “Do you remember my name?”

He cranks his memory. She had said it earlier ( _when was that?_ ).

“I’m Doctor Ella Mortimer, and you are in St Bartholomew’s Psychiatric Hospital.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sherlock says, turning his head to look to his sides. His vision is beginning to clear up.

“Why not?” Doctor Mortimer asks. “Is it so hard to believe I am who I say I am?”

On her desk, her phone buzzes suddenly and she turns to look at it. The second she turns around, Sherlock jumps up from his chair, only to fall down on the rug.

He looks down to see his ankles, like his hands, are tied up.

Doctor Mortimer swirls around, then goes behind her desk to press a button.

Sherlock tries to struggle free from the restraints. Something moving next to Doctor Mortimer makes him freeze.

“Jim? Irene?” he asks.

Doctor Mortimer turns around too, looking directly at where Jim and Irene are standing by the large fireplace.

Sherlock stares at Jim, then Irene.

“I’m so sorry to get you mixed up in this,” he says to her. “I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry.”

Irene dangles her head. Jim glances at her with disinterest before turning back to look at Sherlock. Doctor Mortimer turns back to him too, then to Jim and Irene again, looking somehow puzzled.

Sherlock sees the confusion.

“Irene?” he asks.

Irene raises her head. Her eyes are red and moist.

Suddenly, Sherlock understands everything. Anger rises in him and he snarls,

“You bitch. You’ve been working for him all this time?”

Doctor Mortimer takes a step towards him, barely flinching when Sherlock fumes at her,

“What bullshit has he been feeding you? Hospital, my ass! Don’t touch me, you cunt!”

“Who do you see?” Doctor Mortimer asks quietly.

“James Moriarty! Is he paying you to have me tied up, huh? Just wait until I get my hands on you, you ---”

James sneers but the usual power behind it is missing somehow, and he turns his head away from Sherlock as he listens to the snarls and kicks hitting the floor.

“There is no one there, Sherlock,” Doctor Mortimer says just as several orderlies burst in through the door, grab him under his arms and drag him away.

 

 

\\\

“Chronic depression and schizophrenia.”

John stares at Doctor Mortimer.

“People in his condition are often paranoid. I am given to understand that he thought he was working for the government and got mixed up with an operative.”

“But,” John stammers and clenches the knees of his jeans, “I would know if his work included anything like that. I work _with_ him, I know what he does.”

“You can’t be with him 24/7, John,” Doctor Mortimer says gently.

She takes a folder from in front of her and hands it to John.

“He created something he thought he could never have. A woman he could desire, and a man to be his friend. They only became violent when he found the real thing.”

John’s head jerks up.

“Me?” he whispers.

Doctor Mortimer nods.

John looks back down at the papers in the folder.

“But… if he created these… these people and only really got ill when we met, then it’s because of me, he hasn’t been ill before he met me ---“

“John,” Doctor Mortimer interrupts him, “do _not_ blame yourself for this. If anything, we should be thankful that you appeared in his life. You saw the symptoms, you called us, you did the right thing. And when it comes to the hallucinations, he has had them for years, far longer than is typical. In his case, I’d recommend medication as well as ECT.”

“But that’s not used for schizophrenia!” John gasps.

“It is unusual but Sherlock’s case is borderline extreme. He has been ill for years, his first hallucination - that I know off - dates back over fifteen years and his depression is highly likely to be older than that. You do know he was addicted to cocaine?”

“Yes, of course I knew...“

“John,” Doctor Mortimer says gently, “he had a mental breakdown at sixteen when his mother died. I don’t think he ever truly recovered from it.”

John stares at her, his eyes growing misty.

“I should have seen it,” he gulps. “I should have known, I should have made it better. I could have _helped_.”

Right then, the door to Doctor Mortimer’s office opens without preamble and they both turn to look.

Mycroft Holmes stands at the door.

 

 

\\\

It is a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Sherlock feels light and finally able to breathe again after being locked inside for what feels like forever.

He walks over the soft grass, away from the large brick building behind him. The orderly following close behind does not disturb his peace, not even the restraints on his wrists can break the slight chance of happiness he feels when the sun shines brightly from the cloudless sky and warms his whole body.

But the moment can be ruined by something.

“Morning, Sherlock,” Doctor Mortimer calls from a distance.

Sherlock scowls and does not reply.

As a reply to her inquiries about his health she only gets more silence and uglier sneers. Finally she turns to the one subject she knows Sherlock can’t keep quiet about. His _condition_.

“Why do you think I continue to keep you here?”

“You just want to see if I’ll break. Believe me, you’ll fail. I’ve been kicked and beaten down so many times in my life I’m used to it. I don’t break easily.”

“I don’t mean to break you, Sherlock,” Doctor Mortimer assures him.

She watches as he trots down the grassy slope slowly, the orderly close behind him but at a respectful distance. She nods at him and he stops while she and Sherlock keep walking down the slope and stop under a huge oak. Sherlock lifts his face up to inspect the sunshine flickering through the foliage, enjoys the freckles of light on his skin. The peace is broken once more by Doctor Mortimer’s next question.

“What do you think James’ role in this all is, then? Is he just a useful middleman recruited by us as the easiest way to get to you?”

Sherlock lifts his hands against the steady bark.

“You know your plots better than I do,” he replies.

“How about Irene?” Doctor Mortimer persists. “Why do you think you saw her in my office?”

Sherlock opens his eyes but doesn’t turn to look at her.

“I saw her because she was _there_. I don’t know why she was. You may have threatened Harriet.”

“Harriet?” Doctor Mortimer asks. “Who’s Harriet?”

Sherlock scratches at the bark.

“And your husband? He called me. Is he in on it too?” Doctor Mortimer continues.

Sherlock turns around angrily and snarls,

“He’s confused.”

“Sherlock, you have been here for two days now. In all the conversations we have had, and I am not counting minutes ---“

“186.”

She smiles.

“I am glad our meetings have not completely passed your notion.”

“Just extra minutes to delete. 187,” Sherlock turns back to the tree, inspects the bark, scratches it again with his finger.

“And in all those minutes you have not once said a bad word against John.”

Sherlock scoffs like the idea is ludicrous to him.

“You don’t accuse him of anything. And yet he is the one who phoned me, asked me to come and see you in the first place. You screamed at James in my office, called him names. You were clearly angry.”

“He betrayed me.”

“And John didn’t?” she asks evenly.

“188.”

Doctor Mortimer follows Sherlock’s slow walk down the hill for a moment.

“The way I see it,” she says, “John is the only thing you still consider real. I would recommend you hold on to that.”

 

 

\\\

John looks so small sitting at the table in the meeting room. His hands on his lap, eyes cast down he is like an abandoned child in a strange place where no one wants to help him. He looks up when he hears the door open.

His eyes are red and bloodshot. He rises a bit wobbly as Sherlock walks slowly to the table and hugs him like he is afraid Sherlock will disappear if he lets go, apologising again and again. Sherlock hushes him, though his voice feels tight in his throat and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. So he clutches John to his chest and when John lets go and sits down, Sherlock stays standing for a moment, still lost as to what he is supposed to do.

“I missed you,” he says.

John smiles and sniffs.

“I missed you too.”

Powered by this, Sherlock clutches at his hand and whispers as he sits down,

“I need to talk to you.”

He glances around, but the only one looking at them is the orderly, so he lowers his voice more so that John has to lean in to hear. Which is good. He likes to have John near him.

“I realise my actions, my inability to talk to you about my life lately have seemed odd. Insane even.”

He strokes the ring on John’s finger.

“I left you with no other choice. You had to do what you thought was right. It’s my fault. I left you alone, and I’m so sorry for that.”

“That’s okay,” John sniffs.

Sherlock strokes his cheek.

“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. You just have to prove it to them. Go home, there’s a notebook with everything I’ve ever done for Jim written down. I can’t get any concrete evidence because what I’ve been doing for him has to have been done in silence with no contact that could be traced. But his number is there, in the notebook. Phone him. He says he works for the MI6 but it’s just a cover for his role as an operative. But he will help, he has to. I know things about him -“

“Stop.”

“Phone him, explain the situation - “

“Stop, Sherlock.”

“- tell him I need his help - “

“Stop.”

“- tell him he has to come here - “

“Stop, stop, _stop_!” John screams.

Everyone around them freezes. Sherlock looks distraught, confused at the tears in John’s eyes.

“I found the notebook. I called the number,” John says quietly.

Good, good, Sherlock nods.

“There is no James Moriarty,” John shakes his head.

Sherlock is stunned.

“Of course there is! I lived with him in university - “

“I asked. The records show you lived alone.”

“I - I’ve been working for him ---“

“Doing what? Catching enemies of the country? Little bit of extra excitement on the side?”

John reaches for the hands clutching the side of the table and takes them in his.

“It’s not real. Do you understand me, baby? It’s not real. You’re sick, Sherlock. You’re sick.”

Sherlock tears himself free, turns and stumbles towards the door where the orderly is waiting for him. He hears John scream his name, almost crashes against the doorframe, feels the hands of the young man grab him and stumbles along the corridor, away from the room where he can still hear John call after him, his voice like someone else’s now, someone he doesn’t know.

 

 

\\\

He doesn’t have access to any of his belongings, his mobile phone or his notebook, so he can’t check. But he knows what he _can_ check. What has to be there, what they cannot explain away.

Standing in front of the mirror in the toilet, the orderly standing by at the door, Sherlock lifts his shirt to inspect his right side, looking for the bullet wound.

His fingers hover over the skin before he dares to touch it, stroke over the point where the bullet crazed him only a few weeks back.

It’s not there.

His skin is as smooth as ever, no scars or any signs that a bullet had almost gone through him, that there has been a larger quantity of blood and that someone as inexperienced as him has stitched it up.

“Mr Holmes?” the orderly asks, peeking in.

Sherlock turns to him, hand still on his side.

“The bullet wound. It’s gone. I can’t find it.”

He moves his hand to his other side, strokes over his stomach and hips, twirls around in front of the mirror, looking for any blemishes on his skin.

“I can’t find it.”

 

 

\\\

John looks like he has been crying again, but Mycroft is his usual cold self, standing in attention in the middle of the room, claiming the whole space to himself, taking charge.

“You have to sign it,” he says.

Sherlock stands at the window, his hospital clothes hanging loose over him. He has not eaten well and the several days of confinement seem to be weighing on him so heavily he is withering away.

Outside, some of the patients are sitting in a circle on the lawn, one of the doctor’s standing in the middle, talking quietly, waving her hands up in the air every once in a while.

 _Group therapy_.

Sherlock has refused any kind of group meetings, only agreeing to meet with Doctor Mortimer in private in her office because otherwise she would hunt him down in the garden again, or in his room. He feels better to have her destroy any kind of mental association he has to oriental carpets and grand fireplaces rather than the peace and freedom he still finds in nature.

 _Picnics with John. Trips to forests in the autumn. Swimming in the moonlight. Think_ _about_ _those._

Behind him, Mycroft turns to look at John. Sherlock can see them from the reflection in the glass.

“I am not ill,” he says to them.

Now they both freeze.

John opens his mouth, but Mycroft is faster.

“It is a high time you listened to reason. We would not be doing this if you really didn’t need help. These… _illusions_ you have created are dangerous to you and we have to get rid of them.”

Sherlock’s hand clenches the windowsill but Mycroft merely goes on.

“None of us, not even John, have seen any of these people you claim to exist. Could it be possible that you really are alone, Sherlock?”

“And whose fault is that, hmm?” Sherlock snarls. “You did nothing to help me cope, _nothing_ , after mother died. You shipped me off to university as soon as it was convenient for you to pay any attention to my life. You never let me grieve. Always, ‘Stop behaving like that.’, ‘Don’t do that.’, ‘Don’t be an idiot.’”

“So you are blaming this all on me?” Mycroft asks.

He is still as calm and collected as before, but Sherlock can see the tremor in the hand of his reflection. He clenches the handle of his umbrella tighter but it doesn’t help.

He looks beaten, suddenly.

Next to him, John sits crouched at the edge of Sherlock’s bed. He seems shrunken, small, smaller than when Sherlock saw him last, saying he was ill, begging him to realise it wasn’t real, any of it.

He is not supposed to look like that, John, his soldier. He is supposed to be brave and sturdy, hands steady in the most dangerous of situations, ready to patch up any physical or mental wound.

He looks broken, his John, and he has made him like that.

Sherlock presses his forehead against the cool glass. He can see Mycroft clutch the stack of papers that require his signature, look at John who shakes his head vigorously.

 _Do not say a word. Let him decide_.

The trust he has in him, in the little bits that he seems to think are left of his sanity.

“Do whatever you like,” he says. “Get me out of here.”

Slowly, quietly, Mycroft reaches towards him and lowers the pen and papers on the windowsill. He takes the pen and signs his name on the line without looking.

 

 

\\\

The next day, he is taken to a part of the hospital used for treatments and directed to a large white room with things he does not want to look at and a large window to an adjoining room and John standing behind it, his hand pressed against the glass.

He stays focused on him as the people lay him down, fuzz around him, attach him to things, poke him with things, tie him to things.

His eyes never stray.

Then a needle is pressed into his arm, followed by a small cotton pad wiping at the skin, soft, familiar, John has used them so many times to clean little cuts on his skin.

Then everything goes fuzzy. Behind the glass, John becomes double, one of them still pressing his hand on the window while the other squeezes his fist to his chest, piece of handkerchief poking out between forefinger and thumb. He may be crying, or maybe they are his own tears, filling his eyes and blocking everything out.

He has read about it, but it is nothing like in the books. It hurts and it doesn’t. He feels it somewhere outside himself, and somewhere inside, at the back of his head, where someone else is screaming, his name repeated several times, none of them sounding like pleads for mercy.

 

 

 

**2016**

 

“You still living on Baker Street, then?” Lestrade asks as he clicks shut his briefcase at the end of the day and leads John out of his office.

John nods.

“Mrs Hudson has been an angel. She knows we can’t really afford the rent anymore, so she lowers it just the right amount every month or forgets about it altogether.”

He chuckles but as they walk through the open office space, John eyes catch the eyes of several familiar officer’s and his gaze flicks towards a familiar door that leads to his old quarters. His face grows grim and he stares at the floor until they are out of the building.

Lestrade, who has followed his gaze go from the people occupying the familiar place to the door now shut to him perhaps forever, slows down their pace to draw John’s attention to him.

“How is the clinic treating you?” he asks.

John sighs.

“The hours are better. I can actually go home when I’m supposed to and be with Sherlock. But I do miss it. The excitement. The familiarity of the unknown. Now the most action I get are runny noses and vomiting 3-year-olds.”

They walk in silence for a moment, Lestrade waiting for John to say more, but the walls are too high up after everything that has happened and Lestrade has to be direct if he really wants John to know he cares.

“How are you, John?” he asks.

John looks at him, then back down, then up to the sky before he answers, eyes still on a bundle of cumulus clouds gathering on the clear blue sky.

“I feel angry,” he replies. “Most of the time. And guilty, right after that. Because I didn’t see it. I’m angry at Sherlock, at… God, or whoever is there. At everyone that had anything to do with this. With him being ill. I know it’s no one’s fault. We can’t help things like these.”

He stops suddenly, eyes straight ahead. The hands he has been clutching into fists loosen and Lestrade can see he is touching his wedding ring with his left thumb.

“But then I look at him, and remember that underneath all that is the man I fell in love with. And I realise he has been there the whole time and not hiding at all. I remember that he loves me, and that I love him. Then I feel angry at myself for forgetting that. But he always does something that only he can do, he looks at me in his own special way or says something others might think is insulting. And we are back to just being in love, together. And that’s enough.”

“That’s what it is, John,” Lestrade says. “Love. You love him so much you didn’t see any of his faults. You can’t blame yourself for not noticing.”

John shakes his head slowly, incredulous that anything that has happened could _not_ be his fault.

 

 

\\\

“Sherlock?”

The sitting room is cosy and warm, the windows open to the hot summer afternoon. But the table is a mess, full of papers and books, pens and Sherlock’s old magnifying glass, his laptop on top of it all.

Sherlock himself is sitting in the chair, leaning his head against his hand, and he barely turns to look towards the door fast enough for Lestrade to interpret it as movement. He seems to be having difficulties focusing on the figure standing awkwardly behind John, who walks in briskly and kisses Sherlock’s cheek.

“Look who I brought,” John says and pulls a chair next to Sherlock’s. He gestures Lestrade to sit in it and goes to the kitchen.

Lestrade inches closer and stands behind his chair.

“Hiya,” he smiles awkwardly.

Sherlock lifts his head from his hand. Every movement he makes seems either too slow or too frantic.

“Cigarette?” he asks.

“No thanks, I’m trying to quit,” Lestrade replies, sitting down in the chair now that he realises he is still standing behind it like he is afraid.

“I meant maybe you could offer me one. John still doesn’t allow me to smoke even though it’s now been scientifically proven I am mad.”

Lestrade laughs and relaxes against the backrest of his chair.

“How are you?”

“Can’t complain,” Sherlock replies, stacking papers and putting them away to make room for a glass of water and two pills John has brought from the kitchen.

He glances at the innocuous looking pink pills.

“Could I take them later?” he whispers to John.

“You’re supposed to take them now,” John whispers back, hand going up to rub Sherlock’s neck.

He turns to Lestrade.

“I’m just putting the kettle on. Would you like something else?”

“I’m all right,” Lestrade replies hurriedly, like John is going to too much trouble already.

John disappears to the kitchen and they listen to him click on the kettle and place cups on a tray. Lestrade tries not to look too hard at Sherlock, who takes the pills like they burn, places them on his tongue and gulps down the water.

“We miss you at the Yard,” he says to break the tension.

Sherlock snorts.

“I’m sure Anderson is very happy that I’m _not_ there.”

“Never mind him,” Lestrade says with a wave of his hand, like he could brush the whole problem away with just a flick of his wrist. “The others miss you. They’d become quite attached to you, some had even started to admire you. I hear there is a cult being formed around your name.”

Now Sherlock laughs, but he is clearly pleased with the news. Then he grows solemn, glances at the wall over the sofa where the collages about his cases would usually be but which is now completely bare. Instead, he turns to the desk and takes up a large notebook and hands it to Lestrade.

“I’ve been trying to solve your latest case, the one in the news last night.”

“Oh?” Lestrade inquires happily. He opens the notebook, stares at the unintelligible scribbles and black lines crossing over theories, names being circled in black, the simplest solutions written in a shaking, childlike scrawl and then crossed over again.

“It’s just a bit hard to concentrate what with the... medication,” Sherlock says, and his hand hovers over his temple. “I try to get as much done in a day as I can, but it makes me feel fuzzy and I can barely sit down for half an hour before I’m all out of ideas.”

Lestrade hands back the notebook, rests his elbow on the desk and studies the man in front of him, finally not afraid of him, nor pitying him, but only wanting to help like he would anyone with a problem.

“You know, Sherlock, you should just relax for a while. There are other things besides work.”

Sherlock looks up at him, eyes wild and when he speaks, it’s breathy and desperate,

“What are they?”

John appears with a pot of tea and three cups balanced on a tray. He lowers it down on the coffee table and goes back in the kitchen to get the cake Mrs Hudson baked the day before.

 

 

\\\

Lying on his back, Sherlock stares at the ceiling. Next to him, John is trying to fall asleep but some pent up energy left from the day must still be bubbling inside him because he turns to look at Sherlock and slowly shuffles closer. Pressing his hand over Sherlock’s chest, he moves in to nibble at his pulse point, humming low in his throat before sliding his hand down under the covers.

Sherlock shivers.

He wants it to feel good but John’s touch makes his skin prickle and unable to control his disgust, he pushes the hand away and rolls to lie on his side, facing away from him.

John turns on his back to look at the curtains moving gently in the wind. Sherlock can hear his rasped breathing, a slight sniffle, and a question,

“Is it the medication?”

He does not look at Sherlock but feels him nod, gets up and walks fast to the kitchen. Sherlock hears a glass clink, water run and silence as John gulps it down. Glass breaks against enamel, a hard kick sounds against the cupboard and John sobs quietly,

“I don’t know… What do I do? God, what do I do?”

When he comes back to bed, Sherlock pretends to be asleep though he knows it will only make John feel worse.

 

 

\\\

The next morning in the bathroom, Sherlock inspects the ugly pink pill between his fingers. He listens to John clink away with the dishes, thinks about how he hasn’t touched his bare skin in months, how he has almost forgotten how he tastes.

There is a small crack in the wall behind the sink. He reaches his pinkie in and feels around. Deep enough. He looks over his shoulder and stuffs the pill inside the wall, pours the water down the drain and leaves the bathroom.

 

 

\\\

The change is instantaneous. He can feel again, hear again, see again. He can _think_ again. The fuzziness that has been crowding his senses and muscle control for so long has vanished, and he sets to work again with a renewed enthusiasm. His inbox is bursting with cases, old and new, some of them still current and people in need of his help contact him every week. He does not get bored and feels more alive than he has in years.

He starts up his evidence wall again (John looks surprised but pleased and calls it his little crafts wall just to show him how happy he is that he is working again) and the wallpaper is soon filled with grease stains from old Blu-Tack and torn off in places by pieces of tape.

After a couple of months, an especially demanding case comes across his way and he barely looks up from the wall for hours. He knows John to be hovering somewhere in the background, go to work, come back, disappear into the kitchen.

Something appears in his field of vision.

“What’s this?” he asks the intrusive item.

“Yoghurt. Banana.”

“Why?” he demands.

John doesn’t sigh or change his tone.

“You have to eat regularly, so you can take the pills.”

Sherlock takes the offered spoon to his right hand and the pot to the other, pointedly opens the lid with a flip, dugs the spoon in and puts it in his mouth. He makes a loud _mmmmmm_ sound to emphasise how good the bloody thing is.

“Thank you,” John says.

He walks to the window where the notes Sherlock hasn’t been able to fit on the wall shine white against the glass. The sun pouring in casts shadows the shape of numbers and letters over his face and for a moment he is haloed by the light and mysticism of the symbols on his skin.

Sherlock thinks about the dozens of pills he has hidden in the crack under the sink and dives back in his yoghurt.

 

 

 

**2017**

 

He is alone at home, John working a double-shift at the surgery.

“Sherlock.”

He swirls around from his desk, only to see the familiar black eyes inches away from his.

“Jim… No, don’t come any closer.”

He stumbles back, falls over a pile of magazines and hits his head painfully against the metal of his armchair.

Jim looks at him with a bored expression on his face, like he thinks Sherlock is a pathetic waste of time. He crouches down to inspect him more closely. Sherlock flinches away from him, but winces at the pain.

His head aches and he feels like he will throw up.

“You’re not real,” he whispers.

Jim’s hand hovers in front of his eyes and suddenly slaps him across the face.

The air rushes out of his lungs and he slumps down on the rug.

“Real enough for you?” Jim hisses.

He grabs Sherlock’s hair painfully, so tightly it feels like it will come off in his fist. The pain inside his head intensifies.

“You are not real, you are not,” he whispers.

“Did you really think you could make up someone like me? James Moriarty?” Jim asks.

Sherlock blinks through the tears and looks at him.

“I lived alone in university, they have no record of you there.”

“Do you think they’d not wipe out all the information about my past? My whole life changed when I hopped on board the international spying industry.”

He pulls Sherlock’s hair tighter and shakes him. At Sherlock’s moan, he loosens his grip but leans in even closer to whisper in his ear,

“But I’ve become so much more now. The guys who used to boss me around are shivering in their panties. I’m your worst nightmare, Sherlock. I’m the consulting criminal of the century! And you will remember that. I’m gonna be so nasty next time. Ooh, it’s gonna be _huge_!”

He punches Sherlock in the stomach and he falls back on the carpet, couching. Patting his hands like they are dirty, flicking lint from his suit, Jim turns around and walks leisurely to the door. There he turns again and says brightly,

“I’ll be seeing you, Sherlock. Say hi to John for me.”

The door clicks shut behind him.

 

 

\\\

Two weeks later, after several mysterious explosions have filled the newspapers with screaming headlines of dozens of lives lost, dozens of victims lying dead under the rubble that can’t be cleared away before another explosion takes twice the amount of lives in a different part of the city. Two weeks later Sherlock stands in front of a collage of photos, newspaper articles and police reports in the sitting room, brain whirring with information, eyes scanning the papers stapled to the wall. He listens to the clock tick in the kitchen and counts the seconds to the inevitable, when Jim is going to blow up more people.

He knows it’s him. Has to be. He promised something big for his next appearance.

“Sherlock, you have my thermometer.”

“Hmm?”

“My thermometer, love. It’s in your pocket.”

Sherlock looks down, searching for his breast pocket with his eyes. He realises he is still in his pyjamas, has been for the past three days, and the pocket of his dressing gown is full of pens as usual. And John’s thermometer.

He whips it out without looking at John, who is hovering near him, and offers it over his shoulder. Eyes still glued to the photos on the wall, he barely registers the swift kiss John plants on his cheekbone and is out of the door.

The stairs creak, the front door opens and Sherlock is suddenly electrocuted back into the present, he stumbles down the stairs, bare feet slipping under the loose belt of his dressing gown and he has to hold the banister so he won’t fall down the last steps. John stares at him from the door, terrified of the sudden change in his husband, eyes round with surprise, when Sherlock stumbles the last few feet and to a halt in front of him. He doesn’t stop to take a breath before he glues his lips to John’s, muffled gasp of surprise a whiff of air on his face and John buries himself as deep against him as he can.

They stay like that for so long that when Sherlock finally detaches himself, he instinctively knows John has missed his bus and either has to take the tube and arrive to work sweaty and exhausted or wait for the next bus and arrive late.

Neither option seems to bother him at the moment. His eyes are hooded and his mouth is set into a sated happy smile.

“I forgot to kiss you goodbye,” Sherlock explains carefully.

John’s grin widens and he leans in to kiss the tip of Sherlock’s nose before stroking his back and turning to the door. The stupid smile still in place, he blows Sherlock a kiss and closes the door behind himself.

His phone is ringing when he makes his way back upstairs.

“Say hello to the darlings!” a cheerful sing-song voice calls from the other end.

“Uncle Sherlock?” another voice whispers next.

_No, no, nonono! Oh please, God, no!_

“Jim!” Sherlock screams. “Let her go!”

“What?” Jim asks when he comes back. “And leave mama all alone in here?”

Sherlock gulps.

“Sherlock…” Irene breathes on the other end.

He has no time to try and ask her anything before Jim is back.

“I told you you'd be seeing me,” he hisses before the line goes dead.

Phone still in hand, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, only feeling terror, Sherlock slumps on the carpet.

It’s his fault. He got to them through him. And once he is done with them, he’ll come after everyone he knows. After Lestrade, after Mrs Hudson.

After John.

He rises slowly, goes to the bedroom, takes a shoebox out from the closet and stares at the gun in it. John has taken good care of it, cleaned it often and oiled it regularly. The bullets are in a small cardboard box right next to it. Just in case.

He fills the gun, puts it in the pocket of his dressing gown and goes back into the sitting room to wait.

 

 

\\\

John comes home eight hours later and the moment he walks through the door, he knows something is wrong.

The flat is completely dark, the curtains are drawn and there is an eerie silence everywhere.

“Sherlock?”

A hand snatches at him from the corner and he yelps as he is pulled against a trembling body.

“Shh!” Sherlock whispers, goes slowly to the door and looks in the hall. He listen for a moment, then closes the door and goes back to John.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“What --- Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” John asks confused.

“Were you followed?” Sherlock continues.

“Followed? No, why would anyone follow me? Sherlock, what ---?”

“Have you _been_ followed lately? Have you been feeling like somebody is watching you?”

John is beginning to look concerned.

“Sherlock, this is not you. This is… You’re like before when ---“

His eyes grow enormous at the realisation.

“Sherlock,” he whispers, “have you been taking your meds?”

Sherlock looks down at his feet.

“Sherlock, answer me.”

“I had to!” Sherlock bellows. “Jim was killing people! The explosions were all him. And now he has Irene and Harriet! I needed to think.”

John doesn’t reply but moves back slowly.

“I have to call Ella,” he says quietly.

“Oh, he’s calling the quack!”

Sherlock swirls around to see Jim standing at the open door. “All the little doctors will have a little meeting and get you back in the little hospital.”

Jim takes a step towards John.

“No, don’t!”

John looks at him, sees it is not him Sherlock is looking at and turns towards the empty corner.

“Who are you talking to?” he whispers.

“And you know what will happen then? Countless people will die because _you_ won’t be there to save them,” Jim accuses, voice full of joyful glee.

“Sherlock, is it Jim?” John pleads.

“Sherlock, help us.”

He whips around to look at Irene and Harriet standing in the corner, Harriet’s face buried in Irene’s dress. Her little body is covered in Semtex.

“He’ll kill us if you let John use the phone,” Irene whimpers, cheeks striped with tears.

Sherlock looks round manically, at Jim humming to himself in the corner, at Harriet crying against her mother’s dress, John at the kitchen door, phone still in hand.

“John, please, put the phone down.”

Like on automatic, his hand goes to his pocket and pulls out the gun. Blood drains from John’s face and he turns off the phone and puts it on the table, backing away from it, raising his hands.

“What a good pet!” Jim says gleefully, inspecting John’s surrender, walking around him slowly. He sizes him up and down, biting his lip and sniffing the air around him.

“He’s lovely. No wonder you like having him around,” Jim says, lowering his mouth towards John’s ear as if to suck on the earlobe.

“Stay away from him!” Sherlock bellows, pointing the gun frantically, trying to aim at Jim without getting John on the line.

“Such a fuss!” Jim tsks. He shakes invisible lint off his jacket, rolling something between forefinger and thumb, flicking it away he turns to Sherlock. “Why bother? He is not even real.”

“ _What?_ ” Sherlock barks.

“Sherlock, what’s going on?” John asks quietly, voice full of faked calm.

“He is real! He is!”

“Really? How can you tell? How can you tell he is not another fantasy? Created by your petty little mind because you needed someone to care for, to care for _you_ , so you created John Watson?”

“Others have seen him. They were at our wedding!” Sherlock cries out.

“Lies, lies, lies!” Jim singsongs, taking a few waltz steps towards Sherlock, standing right at gunpoint. “All lies! All creation, all in your pretty little head. No real people there, no real wedding. You were asleep the whole time.”

Sherlock falls to his knees on the floor, ears full of noises, of Irene and Harriet sobbing, Jim humming a small tune under his breath, and John’s heavy breathing.

Jim leans in to murmur in his ear,

“But the hospital was real. And he was the one who put you there. Crawled inside your head and gave you in. Better finish him now or it will be the girls next.”

He steps away from the gun and moves to stand next to Sherlock’s shaking form.

“Sherlock,” John steps closer to him.

Sherlock points the gun at him and John freezes.

“Please, Sherlock, do as he says!” Irene pleads. “Please, for us.”

Harriet looks up at him from the folds of her mother’s dress, darkened by the tears.

“They say you are not real,” Sherlock says to John.

John folds to his knees in front of him.

“They say I should kill you,” Sherlock whispers.

Behind him, Jim spits insults at him and by the door Harriet and Irene are still crying quietly. Sherlock doesn’t look at any of them but stares at John. He can feel them though, every fibre of their being is glued on his skin like an itch.

His hands shake.

“What should I do?” he asks John.

John lifts his hand slowly.

“John, what should I do?”

“Finish him now!” Jim screams.

“Please, Sherlock, do it,” Irene cries.

But John does not reach for the Sig. His hand goes to Sherlock’s left, allowing his right to stay on the gun, and raises the hand to his face.

“Feel this?” he asks, and it’s like a gigantic electric impulse of life goes through Sherlock’s fingertips.

His mind spins round.

_John and Jim never exist in the same interactive field. Irene and Harriet…_

John lowers the hand to his chest.

“And this?”

 _Thump-thump-thump_ , says John’s heart.

_Irene and Jim… Harriet…_

“This,” John presses Sherlock’s hand more firmly against his heart.

_Thump-thump-thump..._

_I cannot exist without John._

“This is real.”

_Thump-thump-thump..._

_Irene can exist without Harriet. Jim can exist without Irene. Harriet has never existed without Irene._

_I cannot exist without John._

_Harriet… never exists… never changes… never… grows up…_

_Thump-thump-thu ---_

_Harriet never gets old._

The gun goes off and John jumps slightly, hands still holding Sherlock’s shivering one over his heart. The bullet goes clean through the glass of the kitchen door and embeds itself into the fridge on the opposite side of the room.

“It was there the whole time. The answer.”

Sherlock squeezes John’s hand over his heart so tight it hurts.

_Thump-thump-thump..._

“Harriet doesn’t get old. She can’t be real.”

He looks to the doorway where Harriet had just stood with Irene holding her against her, behind him where Jim had leaned against the wall, looking like all of this was just a show to entertain him.

There’s no one there.

He throws himself into John’s arms and cries.

 

 

\\\

Doctor Mortimer looks very angry but collected. Mycroft, however, is furious.

“Why did you stop taking your medication?” he asks Sherlock.

John, sitting as close to his husband as possible, hands clutched around his cup of tea, looks carefully at Sherlock who is staring at the table, hands loose on his lap.

He sniffs quietly. His eyes are puffy but Mycroft hasn’t mentioned it, not yet. John begs Mycroft will give Sherlock the illusion that his brother hasn’t caught him crying. He would feel even more surrounded and small.

“I couldn’t work.”

His voice is deep, hardened by crying and the sorrow of having lost so much in one night. John tries to think of some movement, some indication that Sherlock has not lost him.

“I couldn’t help around the house. I couldn’t help Mrs Hudson put away the shopping. I couldn’t…”

He looks away, eyes searching something from the living room.

 _Away from me,_ John realises.

“I couldn’t respond to my husband,” Sherlock says to the dusty Persian rug.

He looks accusingly at Mycroft and Doctor Mortimer.

“Is that better than being crazy?”

Doctor Mortimer leans in over the table, armed with the calmness of a psychiatrist and her 20 years of experience of speaking in hushed tones.

“You have set yourself back months of work, Sherlock. We have to start with a new, stronger medication immediately. We might even have to reconsider shock treatment. I think that, for now, it would be better if you came to stay in the hospital ---”

“No.”

She doesn’t give up.

“Just for a few months. You’ll be back before you know it and then you can continue to live your life just as usual ---”

“’Usual’?” Sherlock asks. “You think this is usual? Feeling tired all the time? Spams? Staring at a wall for hours because you don’t know what you are doing there, you just know that’s what you _usually_ do?”

“You are degenerating, Sherlock,” Mycroft says.

Sherlock stares at him murderously.

“You may have symptom-free days,” Doctor Mortimer continues, powered by Mycroft’s intervention. “You may go for a week without feeling any different, but over time you will get worse.”

“It’s a problem,” Sherlock says, eyes suddenly on John. “Only a problem. That’s what I do. I… solve problems.”

There is a ‘we’ hanging on the tip of his tongue before he sucks it in. John can hear it. And he hears the pleading in Sherlock’s voice, different from what Mycroft and Doctor Mortimer are hearing. They glance at one another, but John keeps his eyes on Sherlock’s, reads the desperation in them, the determination in his steady hands, the single-mindedness in the set of his jaw.

His face is the same as on a good crime scene, but his eyes tell John that he knows this is not a game and he won’t treat it as such.

“This is not a clever crime, Sherlock,” Doctor Mortimer says gently. “This is your life, you cannot catch the illness like a criminal and lock it in jail.”

“Of course I can. I just need to ---“

“You can’t reason your way out of this!” Mycroft bellows suddenly.

“Why not? Why can’t I?” Sherlock screams back.

“Because your mind is where the problem is in the first place!”

“Mycroft,” John says quietly, “I have asked you here out of politeness because you are Sherlock’s next of kin. But I am his husband, and if you can’t act civilized towards him in our own home, I will throw you out on your arse and you can be sure that the next time you show yourself here, you won’t be welcome.”

For the first time since he has met John, Mycroft looks taken aback. They stare at each other over the table, John stern, Mycroft calculating, posture stiff. Sherlock realises he is afraid. Afraid for him, afraid he has made a mistake, has miscalculated John.

The moment passes and Mycroft slumps, nods slightly and rises from the table. He moves to the window, hands together behind his back. Doctor Mortimer, surprised herself at John’s outburst, is still looking at him for support. When he turns towards them, his eyes are hooded.

“No treatment.”

He takes his coat from the chair and steps out. They can hear him on his phone, ordering the car to come pick him and Doctor Mortimer up.

Under the table, Sherlock takes John’s hand and squeezes it so that his joints crackle. John squeezes back just as hard.

 

 

\\\

Sitting on their bed, Sherlock listens to John’s voice floating upstairs from the door where he is seeing Doctor Mortimer and Mycroft off. Sherlock hears her quiet pleading, she is probably squeezing John’s hands in hers.

Surprisingly, Mycroft is not saying anything.

Slowly, Sherlock gets up, takes a suitcase from the closet and begins to pack his clothes in it.

When John walks through the door, Sherlock is once again sitting on the bed, fiddling an old familiar handkerchief in his fists.

“I wouldn’t come home, you know. They wouldn’t let me,” he says without looking up.

John doesn’t say anything. Sherlock moves his gaze away from his hands, only as far as John’s shoes to see he is standing over the threshold, leaning against the door frame.

His posture doesn’t look stiff, like he will run away from the first rash move, so Sherlock dares a look at his face.

John expression is neutral, inspecting Sherlock without judgement, waiting for him to say more.

“It doesn’t mean anything that Mycroft denied her the pleasure of treating me. You can sign the papers as well,” Sherlock notes.

“Maybe I won’t sign them,” John whispers.

“That would be extremely foolish of you. You have no idea what I could do. _I_ have no idea. It’s like all the data has left my head.”

Sherlock looks back at the handkerchief, sees he is clutching it so hard his knuckles have gone white and releases his grip.

“She is right,” he says to it. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Could you hurt me, Sherlock?”

He is so afraid to look, but he raises his eyes again.

John’s expression has not changed.

“I don’t know.”

John knows how much those words hurt Sherlock, have always hurt him. When he doesn’t have the answer, when it takes longer than usual for him to get there. That is why he got attached to cocaine first, then to detective work.

John turns away slowly. Sherlock hears him shuffle down the corridor and descend the steps. He counts each until they reach the front door, trying to listen to the soft murmur of sounds, Doctor Mortimer’s voice sharpest of all, though she takes extra effort to hide the sting.

The door closes and silence descends. Outside, a car starts and drives away, the pavement rattling under the wheels.

He pricks his ears but nothing, no one is there. Sitting on their bed facing the door, he lowers his gaze in fear of seeing Jim or Harriet again, being left alone with them, free for them to torment him as they please.

A soft bang startles him and makes him raise his head again. John is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, he looks at Sherlock like he did the first time he came to see him on Baker Street.

“Mycroft told me to call if you try and kill me or anything,” he smiles sadly.

It’s his defence mechanism and Sherlock knows it. And he is infinitely grateful.

Dear John, with his stupid, _stupid_ jokes.

John walks to him and sits down on his knees on the rug. He rubs his hands over Sherlock’s thighs, smoothing the rumpled trousers Sherlock hasn’t changed in days. A single tear drops down on his hand and he looks up at Sherlock, whose eyes are red and puffy.

But John is calm and far from tears. He stares into Sherlock’s eyes, roots himself in them, making sure Sherlock knows he is not going to leave.

**  
**

 

**2018**

 

The steps leading to the quadrangle look exactly the same as they did 20 years previous.

Sherlock stands at the bottom of them for a long while, clutching his hands into fists, counting the pairs of feet walking past, dozens and dozens of shoes, blue, black, brown and white. Skirts and trousers whish past, some on their way in to the temple of learning, the others towards the leisures of weekend and free time.

Sherlock breathes in deeply, places his foot on the first step, then the other, then walks up and through the quadrangle, turns left and then right and then left again until he finds the math building, walks up two flights of stairs and knocks on the door.

“Enter,” the familiar deep voice calls from inside.

He turns the handle and peaks in.

“Hello, Victor.”

The man sitting by the desk in the room lifts his eyes from the exam papers, realises who has appeared in his doorway and freezes.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasps.

“Not quite," Sherlock smiles.

They stare at each other for a moment, Victor’s mouth melting to a fond smile at Sherlock’s little joke. He gets up hurriedly and walks to where Sherlock is still standing awkwardly at the doorway.

“I heard what happened,” he begins, stops short and struggles to find words.

Sherlock looks at him embarrassedly from under his fringe.

“Come in!” Victor exclaims. “God, is it good to see you!”

Sherlock sits down at the edge of the chair on the other side of Victor’s desk.

“Is it?” he enquires an engraved pencil box.

“Of course it is,” Victor says. “I’ve been wanting to call you for so long ---“

Suddenly Jim barges in, face red and hands shaking.

“I swear to Christ, Sherlock!” he bellows. “I will kill that son of a bitch if you don’t get up from your arse right this second and ---“

Sherlock’s fist hits the chair’s armrest and the whole room freezes.

Victor glances towards the empty doorway, then back to Sherlock and his clenched fist.

“Could you,” Sherlock whispers, ”please pretend that didn’t just happen?”

“Yes, of course,” Victor replies instantly. “What are friends for?”

Sherlock tears his eyes away from Jim’s shoes.

“Are we friends? Victor.”

“Of course we are. We always have been.”

They stay quiet for a moment. Sherlock’s gaze doesn’t return to where Jim is standing but inspects Victor’s desk and the bric-a-brac covering it instead. Victor waits for him to speak, hands crossed over the desk.

“John thinks - and I agree - that a familiar surrounding might be good for me now,” Sherlock begins quietly. “I’ve been drifting quite a lot in the past 25 years and there really isn’t many concrete places in London to which I have an emotional connection. Where I could belong to some kind of community.”

He turns his head to look at the magnificent fireplace, one of the few in the building still functioning, never meeting Victor’s eyes.

“So I was wondering if I could just... hang around.”

He hears Victor breathe in with a little stutter, almost like a laugh, and he looks up. Victor has leaned back in his chair, fingers covering his mouth, lips spreading slowly into a smile.

“Would you be needing an office?” he asks, wrinkles of laughter decorating his face right where Sherlock already knew a quarter of a decade ago they would be appearing after Victor had spent his best years chasing potential employers off with a stick, having established himself in a nice day job and gotten healthy and fat on the earthly goods provided by that job.

There is something more in the wrinkles though. Something Sherlock didn’t take into count. There is an extra line surrounding both sides of Victor’s lips, lines that can only be acquired through experience and understanding of living with the realities of the world.

“No,” Sherlock replies finally. “I can just... sit in the library.”

 

 

They don’t allow him in without credentials. He tries to explain Victor has made an exception with him but they shake their heads and turn him away. He stumbles out, head spinning, trying to remember where Victor has his lectures today, trying to find help. Jim is there, standing in the courtyard, pointing at each student and teacher that passes him and pretends to shoot them in the back of the head. He spots Sherlock and begins to taunt him.

“The man of the hour! Mr Holmes, here to save the day!”

“Shut up!” Sherlock yells, and everyone close by stops to look at the empty spot he continues to scream at.

“You are not real! You are not _real_!”

“Oh, really?” Jim leers. “You are still talking to me, big shot. A doofus, who can’t even get the simplest case solved with all the drugs he needs to take to keep his _imaginary friends_ away. What’s the matter, Sherlock? Can’t handle the world around you? Too _real_?”

“It is real, it is better than you, better than you,” Sherlock mutters, walking in circles, Jim close behind him, taunting him every step he takes. “It’s better than you.”

“And still you choose to talk to me instead of your precious _real_ people. So petty, so ordinary. Would be better to just blow them all up ---“

“ _Shut up!_ ”

“Sherlock!”

Victor has heard the commotion and run to the courtyard, waving the security guards away, pushing through the crowd of ogling students and teachers. He grabs Sherlock’s shoulders and repeats his name.

Sherlock stops swirling around and stares at him. He grabs Victor’s face into his palms and says,

“You’re better than him, you are. You are better than him.”

“Hey, Holmes, it’s okay. It’s okay, hey?” Victor shushes.

Only now Sherlock seems to notice the crowd around him, everyone still staring, some whispering to each other, and he tears himself away from Victors grasp and stumbles away. Victor calls his name desperately and runs after him.

Behind him, Jim gives him a final parting yell.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the great Sherlock Holmes!”

 

 

\\\

“You should have seen them,” Sherlock tells John later that evening.

They are sitting in front of a fire on the sitting room rug, blanket drawn over them both, their legs tangled together, John’s toes tickling his beneath the folds of the blanket.

“Just staring at me. Like I was a freak.”

“You are not a freak,” John says sternly.

“But I am, aren’t I?” Sherlock points out. “It’s been scientifically proven several times.”

John takes his hand and squeezes it.

“You are _not_ a freak, and don’t you ever dare to say so again. You have schizophrenia, which is not a synonym for being a freak. Those people out there, the ones who stood and watched as you were torn apart by a situation that was not in your control, they are the freaks.”

“Aww, how sweet,” Jim sighs behind them.

He is lounging in John’s chair, legs throw over the side, stretching his feet to get them closer to the fire.

Sherlock doesn’t look at him.

“Maybe just try again tomorrow?” John suggests.

Sherlock takes a hold of his other hand.

“You know it’s a mistaaaaake, Sherlock.”

“Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow,” Sherlock agrees.

Behind him Jim scoffs.

 

 

\\\

He is back the next morning as Sherlock makes his way towards the library again. Irene and Harriet are walking hand in hand on his left, Jim with his hands in his pockets marching briskly on his right.

At the door to the library, Sherlock stops.

“This is as far as it goes,” he says.

Then he turns to look at the three standing behind him. First, he goes to Jim and looks at him for a moment.

“Jim, you have been a good friend and a great enemy. I don’t really know which one I am more grateful for. But I won’t be talking to you again.”

Then he turns to Irene and Harriet.

“Same goes with you girls.”

Harriet begins to cry quietly. But Jim stares after him as he walks away through the doors, towards the kindly smiling librarian who takes his ID and goes to arrange a visitor’s pass for him.

“You’ll never get rid of me, Sherlock! I’ll always be there!” Jim bellows from the other side of the doors.

He is. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Harriet. Sherlock turns round a corner and he is standing there, leaning against a wall, grinning alluringly, begins to approach him with an air of confidentiality but Sherlock walks past him without looking.

He is there, taunting him, snarling insults and threats, making him halt when he starts to talk about John.

 

 

The first time he goes to a crime scene after Lestrade has officially taken him back, Anderson begins to talk loudly about what a _freak_ the killer must be and how _delusional_ he must have become to do something like that. Sherlock freezes but Lestrade is there, red with anger, and he sends Anderson home on the spot, in front of everyone. Later John tells him that Lestrade has made an announcement in front of his team, saying that whoever has a problem with Sherlock or anything that comes with him, whether it be flesh and blood or a figment of his imagination, can close the door on their way out.

 

 

 

**2035**

 

Sherlock crouches over the corpse with a slight grunt, flicks open his magnifying glass and begins to inspect the interesting looking fibres on the victim’s shoulders.

“He wasn’t killed here,” he says out loud. “He was covered with the same fabric his coat is made of, but he was killed on a black shag carpet. There are fibres from it on his shoes. The killer knew he was going to wear the coat. It’s likely the only one in his closet big enough to cover the choice of outfit,” he opens the coat to reveal a crimson corset and lace panties poking out from under the man’s jeans. “So he knew the killer, went to meet them expecting a good time and met his end by the force of a blunt instrument to the head. Probably a golf club belonging to him that his fiancée took with her when she decided to murder the man who had been cheating on her with other men and decided the best way to end him was to hit him in the face with it and then give him a few good punches with his ring she then slipped back to his finger once he was dead. You can see the pattern of the ring around the bruise on his cheek.”

“That’s amazing!”

Sherlock looks up. He is alone in the room but for a young constable standing in the doorway, looking like he can’t keep himself from entering but not wanting to disturb him.

Sherlock blinks. He has forgotten Lestrade has stayed outside to talk to one of the neighbours and John is still at the clinic. He had sensed another person’s presence and just began to explain his conclusions.

The young constable stands in the doorway but now his right foot isinching over the threshold. His eyes are gleaming and his cheeks are red with excitement as he stares at Sherlock and blushes under his scrutiny.

Sherlock hasn’t heard those words in such a long time.

“Thank you,” he says slowly.

The boy gets more energy from this and begins to blabber.

“I’ve read all about you, Mr Holmes! Your website, the articles, your husband’s blog. Brilliant stuff! Especially the blog.”

“I’ll pass on your regards.”

The boy turns even more crimson.

“I aspire to be a Detective Inspector,” he says, straightening his posture. “I’ve counted that if I work hard and keep my nose clean, I can get a promotion in five years and be accepted to Inspector Lestrade’s team. Homicide! Now that’s something! I’ve already seen some of the action, of course, had my gun out once but never actually had to shoot…”

Sherlock rises stiffly to his knees.

“Constable, when was the last time you ate?”

“Sir?” the boy stutters.

“When was the last time you ate?” Sherlock repeats. “You know, food?”

They step out into the brilliant sunshine and Sherlock sits on the stairs and dives into one of his pockets.

“My husband,” he says, pulling out a sandwich wrapped in clingfilm, “loves jam.”

“Oh, thank you, sir!” the constable sits down as well and dives into the sandwich like he hasn’t seen food in a week.

“And tea,” Sherlock continues, pulling out a thermos from his other pocket, loosening the two cups attached to the top, offers one to the constable and keeps one to himself.

 

 

\\\

When John finally packs his bags at the clinic and takes the tube to Camden, he is over half an hour late and sweaty from running to get to the address Sherlock has texted him. He has texted him himself several times in turn, but has received no answer and if he didn’t know Lestrade was there he would be extremely worried. But the smile on the DI’s face when John finally huffs to a halt next to him on the roadpromises something good and Lestrade only raises his finger to his lips and points towards the house.

The weather has been gorgeous the whole day and nothing in the atmosphere could ever indicate that something as gruesome as double homicide including two serial killers and their most recent victims found bloody in a pile has just been found inside the house they are standing looking at. The white picket fences and the gleaming clean windows are the picture of peaceful life, apple trees and closely cut grass line the path, children laughing somewhere in the distance.

The only thing seemingly amiss are the flashing lights of the police cars parked on the driveway and the yellow tape decorating the front door and the windows of the house. But what draws John’s attention is not any of these things but the familiar figure of his husband hunched on the stairs, knees on one of the steps, shoulders crouched, scribbling manically into his notebook, talking to the three young constables listening intently.

“The devil is indeed in the details and criminology, like literature or painting, is an art, no matter what those Soutine enthusiastics might say. That’s right, I am looking at you, Wilkins. The next time your girlfriend complains about the crime scene photos, make sure to look at the _Carcass_ she keeps above her work station and pretend to retch.”

One of the young men blushes and his friends bellow with laughter.

“There are not many who can see the artfulness in the bloody executions of the innocent, and that is precisely why so many of the serial killers of our time go unnoticed and unpunished. You have to think like they do to be able to catch them.”

Lestrade chuckles softly at the eager nods of the young officers, looking at Sherlock like he is the second coming. He turns to John, ready to tell what has happened before he arrived, but stops short at the sight of him. John’s eyes are gleaming, he swallows and draws in a shaky breath. Lestrade looks back to Sherlock, growing solemn with the sudden rush of memories of the same voice insulting everyone around him without a pause.

Sherlock looks up, sees John and grows worried. Then he must realise it is a smile and not a frown on John’s lips and he gathers his notebook and magnifying glass one of the constables has been twiddling, says goodbye and starts down the path towards John, stretching his gangly legs as he goes to shake off the prickling feeling of having crouched down for so long.

A sergeant calls for Lestrade from one of the cars, so he only pats John on the shoulder as he walks past him, leaving him to gaze at his miracle in peace.

 

 

 

**2039**

 

The university café is full of students, drinking coffee and tea, eating hurried lunches before running off to lectures, chattering over laptops and notebooks, writing, reading, laughing, snorting, coughing. Living.

Sherlock sits and drinks it all in. In the busy room, no one sees his stare wander over every single person in there, scanning them as he goes, filing away funny things to tell to John when he goes home.

He has time now, waiting for Victor to leave his lecture hall full of similar students, eager to learn the secrets of numbers and become famous mathematicians. Most of them will never have that. Most of them will never succeed in discovering anything new and original. Most of them will change field or become researchers, or analysts, or teachers like Victor.

They might even be happy in the end.

Victor does seem happy. He is laughing with a colleague when he stops at the café door and his smile only widens when he sees Sherlock sitting at his table. He walks over, nodding at the familiar girl cleaning one of the tables, mouths his order to her, bangs his books on the table and slumps in the chair opposite Sherlock’s sighing happily.

“Ah, Friday! I can’t wait to get home and lift my feet up. I should be retired by now, but they’ll probably force me to go on until I die.”

Still leaning against the back of his chair, he draws out an envelope under one of his books.

“Another love letter for you,” he says cheerily and Sherlock moans.

“I wish you wouldn’t encourage your students with this!”

“Don’t worry, I know John doesn’t mind. And this is not from one of the students. A professor in the medical department, Molly Hooper, teaches a few pathology courses and has asked you to give a lecture on the subject.”

Sherlock coughs up his tea.

“A lecture? Me? Has she met me?”

“No, thank God!” Victor chuckles. “But when she does, I’m sure you’ll be very charming and not pick her apart but give an interesting lecture on how you once found that body with the mouldy genitals.”

“The lecture hall will be empty before you know it.”

“Well, there, you see? Problem solved.”

A cup of peppermint tea and a small jug of milk appears on the table in front of them and Victor groans at the sight of it. He gives a wink to the girl and gulps down a mouthful of the tea before adding milk to what remains in the cup. He watches from the corner of his eye as the girl walks away.

“Sweet girl. Reminds me of mine,” he says.

“How is Beth doing in university?” Sherlock asks, surprised how much he is actually interested in Victor’s family.

Victor looks at him with a bright smile, surprised in turn that Sherlock has remembered his daughter’s name.

“She’s doing good,” he says, sipping his tea. “Just started her thesis, which is awful, of course, but it keeps her busy and out of trouble.”

“Difficult times,” Sherlock agrees.

Victor grins.

“Like you’d know. I seem to remember that you barely attended classes in the end and you didn’t even graduate.”

Sherlock blushes and looks at his shoes.

“That was not a criticism, Sherlock,” Victor says solemnly. “Even though it came out like one.”

Sherlock looks back up.

“It was always too easy for you. The classes, essays. You could have recited any chemical formula without glancing at the book, and the experiments you used to do on Burroughs’ equipment! I’m pretty sure the poor man still has wet dreams about them.”

Sherlock’s blush deepens and he laughs quietly.

“You’re a great man, Sherlock Holmes, and don’t you forget it,” Victor gulps down his tea.

He turns to his bag to look for his wallet and takes his reading glasses from where they have been hanging on his shirt collar. He peers at the receipt on the plate, munching slowly on the complimentary biscuit.

“How are you, Victor?”

He raises his eyes and looks at Sherlock over the rim of his glasses. There is such unusual sincerity there and he suddenly sees the young Sherlock sitting opposite him in the university pub, nothing but distaste in his eyes.

He digs into his breast pocket for a handkerchief, takes off his glasses and starts wiping them clean.

“Walk with me?”

Outside the café, they start down the path towards the quadrangles, taking a detour over the grass. They walk slowly, not in a hurry anywhere, and Sherlock feels completely at ease inside the stone walls for the first time in a while.

“They still haunt you?”

The question is not unexpected and Sherlock has had time to form his answer. Glancing over his shoulder at Jim, Irene and Harriet walking slowly some distance away, he says truthfully,

“Yes, and I guess they are never going to stop. But I think on some level I need them there. To remind me of what is real, what I could have lost if I didn’t have John. Or you.”

“I have played a very minor part in this,” Victor says solemnly.

Sherlock stops.

“You are the first person to acknowledge you are my friend.”

He stares at his shoes and kicks the ground. Once again, Victor has a flash of younger, angrier Sherlock walking round the courtyard with his hands in his pockets, muttering to himself.

“I... I needed to hear it. I needed to know that someone could actually be my friend. Someone… real.”

“I was only telling the truth, Sherlock.”

Sherlock stops insulting the gravel with his heel. Slowly, questioningly, he offers Victor his hand. Victor takes it and squeezes it firmly. His hand is much smaller than Sherlock’s, but still it seems to envelope every bit of it in its warmth. The hand is dry and soft and there is a whiff of almond.

“Fourty-five years and you still use the same hand lotion.”

Victor throws his head back and laughs. Sherlock gives his hand a final shake and turns to leave.

“Hey, Holmes,” he hears behind him.

Turning round, he sees Victor holding a chessman in his hand, tossing it up and down. Without having noticed, they have been standing in the middle of the quadrangle with several board games on stone benches. Victor looks at Sherlock with a wide grin.

“You scared?”

Sherlock returns the smile, surprised at how easy it comes.

“Terrified. Mortified. Petrified. Stupefied by you,” he mocks, sitting down opposite Victor and picking his phone from his pocket. “Better text John that I’ll be late or I’m in big trouble.”

Victor chuckles softly and moves his first pawn towards inevitable defeat.

 

 

\\\

_Victor wants to be humiliated. Playing chess at King’s. Home later._

“Doctor Watson, is there something funny with my rash?”

“Not at all, Mrs Travers!” John pockets his phone quickly and turns back to the patient in front of him.

“Now, you say you first saw it after you’d spend the afternoon in your garden trimming the nettles smothering your roses?”

With a last smile at the thought of the text, John turns his focus to the elderly lady worried sick about the strange blisters on her wrists, just on the slight sliver of tanned skin between the white of her hands and arms.

 

 

 

**2053**

 

The landscape is magnificent in its autumn bloom. The river glimmers in the distance like a thousand mirrors, reflecting the clear blue sky and the blazing sun that still feels warm in the middle of October. The trees have lost only a part of their summer green and the grass is still as alive as it was in June, but one look at the surroundings and Sherlock knows it’s autumn.

It’s always been his time of change, cleaning out his mind palace and organising his paperwork, tossing out unnecessary experiments, notes and samples.

Patter of feet in the rustling grass reach him and a voice greets,

“Hello, there.”

He lifts his eyes, sees the blue gaze surrounded by wrinkles, mouth with so many lines of laughter he can’t count them anymore and the hair, still so golden in the sun even though grey strands are taking place over the blond ones and claiming the head theirs.

“Hello, young sir.”

Sherlock pats a spot on the blanket.

“Care to join me?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. The last time I was on a picnic with a decent looking guy, he ended up kissing me.”

“You kissed first.”

“Oh, were you there? I didn’t know we had an audience. I would have used a lot less tongue.”

Stretching his feet in front of himself, John sits down next to him, stretches his arms behind his back to lean his weight against them and closes his eyes against the warm sunshine.

“John, do you know what day it is today?”

Sherlock strokes the veins visible in John’s palm, the callouses and the softer skin of his fingers and looks up when John doesn’t answer.

“40 years ago today I decided to ask you to marry me.”

John hums acknowledgingly, smile tickling at the edges of his mouth as he recalls the occasion.

“I understand it was not my best performance so I have decided to do it again.”

John opens his eyes and looks at him, mouth slightly open in a confused smile.

Sherlock moves in front of him and kneels down. John’s expression grows worried and his hands go to hover over Sherlock’s knees.

“Your legs...” he says softly.

Sherlock dismisses the problem of arthritis in his thigh with a wave of his hand, goes down on one knee and takes John’s hands in his.

“John, I am a ridiculous man,” he begins.

John giggles and nods.

“Every day I wake up wondering what I could have done to deserve you. I keep odd hours, I play the violin when I’m thinking and I never clean, to name some of my major flaws.”

John giggles again, tears slowly gathering in the corners of his eyes.

“But despite my flaws, I’ve been blessed with enough luck and something of a brain to get by in this world, and by the help of both of those I’ve made the most important discovery of my life. I’m always trying to look for reason in things, even when there seemingly is none. Love is one of those and I’ve found it is the greatest reason for everything. I’m only here, I’m only alive because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons.”

He kisses John’s hands, thinks he can hear the thrumming of blood inside the veins, and he couldn’t be happier. He has been allowed to stay by John’s side long enough to see his hands change from smooth, steady surgeon’s hands to soft, veined ones of an old man whose eyes glimmer with happiness because of what _he_ has said.

“Thank you,” John whispers. “Thank you so much, Sherlock.”

Sherlock reaches up to kiss his lips and then sits down next to him with a soft grunt. John’s hand goes to his knees to rub the bones soothingly. Moving up towards his thigh, his hand touches a soft bulge in Sherlock’s trouser pocket. He can see the white of the familiar handkerchief peeking out from it.

He smiles and glances up at Sherlock, who is staring ahead, eyes distant and glassy.

Jim, Irene and Harriet are standing by the lake, shadows drawn long by the setting sun. They are further away than they have ever been before, like they do not dare to come close anymore. Sherlock looks at them long enough for John to catch the direction of his eyes and takes his hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

Sherlock shakes himself slightly and squeezes back.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> Few things I believe I should mention:  
> 1) This is a purely fictitious story, based on a film inspired by real life events. I have followed the plot of the film as closely as possible but have not dug too deeply into the lives of the real people, only done some math with the years to respond Sherlock's life.
> 
> 2) I am not a doctor, a student of medicine or have anything to do with actually treating or studying schizophrenia. I did research on the methods and medicines used to treat it as well as on the symptoms and the side-effects of said medication. I do not claim to know anything about the illness and encourage you not to take my story as truth on how to approach or treat it. Again, this is pure fiction and the research I've done is to give it a touch of realism. In order to do that, I needed to find out whether certain treatments are still used today and how the medicines would actually affect a person. The hospital Sherlock goes to does not exist but is a derivative of the actual St Bartholomew's hospital.
> 
> 3) Sherlock's university, King's College in London, was chosen purely because of its location. The image of it that I have in my mind and which I have reflected into the story is just something I have made up to fit the events. The King's College in my head is a mixture of the locations used in the film as well as the University of Glasgow where I myself studied.
> 
> 4) The scene with Sherlock with Doctor Mortimer outside the hospital as well as some of the dialogue between Sherlock and John by the fire are from deleted scenes that didn't make it into the film. All the rest is either scenes from the film or stuff I have invented myself.


End file.
